Struggles for the Forests

Articles 19 March 2025
In the framework of International Women's Day, WRM is relaunching the podcast “Women’s struggles for land”, with stories from women’s collectives from the coastal area of Chiapas in Mexico, the Malen Chiefdom in Sierra Leone and the Kapuas river area of Central Kalimantan in Indonesia. While their stories appear quite different from each other at first glance, we find many commonalities and a strong connection between them.
Action alerts 3 August 2021
They have been living in the Kaeng Krachan forests for generations. When a National Park was created, they started to suffer violence and evictions. 22 people have been prosecuted this year. They could face a jail term of 4 to 20 years.
Bulletin articles 9 March 2021

Indigenous Karen People from Bang Kloi returned to their ancestral home in the Kaeng Krachan forests, after years of dispossession due to the creation of a National Park. Karen communities are mobilizing in solidarity to the Bang Kloi communities’ right to return home.

Bulletin articles 14 January 2021

Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.

Bulletin articles 14 January 2021

How are forest crimes defined? In Thailand, forest-dependant communities, rather than the government and companies carrying out large-scale deforestation, became scapegoats for this destruction. (Available in Thai).

Action alerts 2 December 2020

Organisations, social movements and activists, from 40 countries express their support and solidarity with a community struggle in Northeastern Thailand to reclaim the land and forests encroached on by the Thor Silasitthi mining company.

Action alerts 9 November 2020

We call organizations around the world to adhere to this letter of solidarity with the women and men human rights defenders (W/HRDs) of Khao Lao Yai-Pha Jun Dai Forest Conservation Group.

Publications 4 April 2019
The booklet “Promise, Divide, Intimidate and Coerce: 12 tactics palm oil companies use to grab community land” aims to support communities who want to strengthen their resistance and better prepare themselves to stop corporations from establishing on their lands.
Bulletin articles 22 December 2018

Despite the many profound damages that industries cause in the world's forests, they also cause something else to emerge: the strong and diverse resistance movements of affected communities defending their territories, livelihoods, cultures and even their existence. The struggle continues! (Available in Swahili).

Other information 18 September 2018

We said it in Mundemba, Cameroon, we reiterated it in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, we re-affirm this in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire: the abuse against women in and around industrial oil palm plantations must STOP!