2009 Annual Report
Innovation for Change
Inter Pares works in collaboration with social justice organizations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Canada. We provide financial, organizational, and political assistance to our counterparts to address the root causes of poverty, injustice, and conflict in their communities and societies. Social change work requires imagination, patience, and perseverance. Often this work requires courage, because powerful interests resist change, sometimes with repression and violence. This Annual Report provides a few examples of what we and our counterparts have achieved with the support of Canadians. For more information about our program, please explore this site.
Daring to Speak the Truth
In Mexico, the southern state of Chiapas is a war zone. Through checkpoints, raids, arrests, and harassment, the army and paramilitary groups have terrorized indigenous communities for sixteen years. This low-intensity counterinsurgency war has been justified as a “war on drugs” and on organized crime, opening the way for paramilitary groups to attack with impunity communities who dare speak out against the violence.
Inter Pares counterpart Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre (FrayBa) works to expose these terror strategies and human rights violations. This past year, working closely with indigenous communities throughout Chiapas, FrayBa produced a “Calendar of Infamy” which documents, month by month, major incidents of human rights violations and the justice that has, or has not, been served in these cases. The calendar highlights crimes against humanity and human rights violations, particularly where the state itself is implicated, and draws attention to the hard-won victories of community groups who have been fighting for justice.
In Burma, Inter Pares counterpart Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) is also exposing state complicity in criminal activity, in particular, the military junta’s role in the illicit drug trade – the cultivation, production, and distribution of opium, heroin, and amphetamines. In June 2009, despite the risks of exposing this intricate web of state collusion, SHAN produced its fifth Shan Drug Watch publication.
SHAN’s 2009 publication evaluates the first decade of the Burmese regime’s fifteen-year drug plan to eradicate all drug cultivation and production by 2014. This analysis clearly demonstrates that the junta has consistently overstated the extent of the drug trade in order to claim a higher success rate in its eradication program. While official records show numerous regions with drastically reduced drug production, in reality the last ten years have seen poppy cultivation and production shifting location and increasing. The UN Office on Drugs and Crimes has also been forced to admit that their own data on Burma’s drug trade, which was aligned with the regime’s official statistics, had been incorrect. By exposing the regime’s misrepresentation of data and its manipulation of international bodies to cover up its involvement in illegal drug production, SHAN’s work is helping undermine the illegal regime.
| Reviewed April 27, 2010 |  |
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