As the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, violence in the West Bank has been escalating to near record levels. According to a report(link is external) by the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), 40,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been displaced by Israeli forces in just the first two months of 2025, making this the largest displacement of civilians since 1967. These forced removals occur alongside the highest rates of Israeli settler terrorism in the West Bank in over two decades.

In a village just a few kilometers away from the Ngorongoro Crater – a top tourist destination in Tanzania – the Maasai celebrate Enkipaata – an ancient rite of passage – where boys become warriors as they transition into adulthood. The threat of forced evictions of over 100,000 Indigenous Maasai in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area now endangers this tradition.

On May 15, 2024, the US Treasury Department sanctioned two Nicaraguan gold companies, Compañía Minera Internacional (COMINTSA) and Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua (“Capital Mining”), claiming that they are , Footnotes View all 

As the 57th session of the UNHRC addresses the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, a new report from the Oakland Institute, Trincomalee Under Siege: Land Grabs Target the Tamil Homeland in Sri Lanka uncovers the rapidly escalating colonization of Tamil and Muslim lands in Trincomalee District.

From Abuse to Power: Ending Fortress Conservation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Oakland Institute exposes conservation’s counterintuitive deep ties to the extraction of natural resources and abuse of Indigenous Peoples in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Throughout decades of environmental conservation in the country, the government and NGOs have failed to address the issue of land grabbing and violence against Indigenous communities.

Boston-based Thomson Safaris is exploiting the Tanzanian government’s brutal repression of land defenders to legitimize control over Maasai land in the Loliondo Division of the Ngorongoro District. In June 2022, the government carried out land demarcation to create a Game Reserve in Loliondo, which saw security forces fire live ammunition on the Maasai, severely wounding dozens and displacing thousands. In the immediate aftermath of these events, Thomson Safaris carried out a resurvey of a long-contested land claim they have in the same area.

This brief reveals how Tanzania’s largest bilateral donor has been instrumental in designing the country’s aggressive strategy to expand the tourism industry at the expense of Indigenous communities. It details how the US is behind a number of policy changes and measures that have led to the expansion of so-called protected areas and favored private operators, including fiscal measures to their benefit. USAID has for instance prepared development plans for Ruaha National Park – currently being implemented by the World Bank – that will result in the eviction of tens of thousands of people.

In a new report, Nicaragua’s Gold Rush, the Oakland Institute exposes how, despite US sanctions on Nicaragua’s gold mining sector, the industry has boomed, fueled by foreign business interests. The US is the primary destination, accounting for a staggering 79 percent of total Nicaraguan gold exports.

Military emissions, excluded from international reporting requirements, account for an estimated five and a half percent of global emissions., Footnotes View

Unaccountable & Complicit: The World Bank Finances Evictions & Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania denounces the World Bank’s role in the violent conservation activities underway around the Ruaha National Park (RUNAPA).

Green Colonialism 2.0: Tree Plantations and Carbon Offsets in Africa examines the African Forestry Impact Platform (AFIP) bankrolled by European development finance institutions, Japanese oil interests, and an Australian investment firm. The AFIP exemplifies the green colonialism that President Ruto of Kenya is promoting on the continent — opening the door for more extraction of Africa's resources. Despite AFIP’s claim of promoting “nature-based solutions,” a troubling pattern of exploitation and greenwashing underscores its investments, stakeholders, and financial backers.

The report from the Oakland Institute exposes the financial interests and the dynamics at play in Ukraine leading to further concentration of land and finance.

The report sounds the alarm on the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Indigenous tribes in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley and urges government and aid agencies to provide relief assistance.

Abdoulaye M. Sissoko: "Mining companies – both Western and Chinese – are ready to do anything to satisfy their thirst for short-term profits."

The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit’s CO2 Pipeline, unmasks the billion-dollar financial interests and high-level political ties driving the Midwest Carbon Express. Led by Summit Carbon Solutions, the project intends to build a 2,000-mile pipeline to carry CO2 across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, to eventually inject and store it underground in North Dakota.

Flawed Plans for Relocation of the Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area builds on field research conducted at two relocation sites — Msomera village in Handeni district and Kitwai A and B villages in Simanjiro district — to reveal that the sites lack adequate water resources and grazing land while promises of improved social and health services by the government remain unfulfilled.

The report debunks the world’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) pipeline project and reveals the checkered history of the man behind it — Bruce Rastetter.

As the escalating climate crisis threatens access to water for millions across Africa, Drying Out African Lands: Expansion of Large-Scale Agriculture Threatens Access to Water in Africa unveils the devastating impact of large-scale agricultural plantations on the right to water on the continent. Since the 2007-2008 food crisis, Africa has been the primary destination of private international investors for large-scale agriculture schemes. Governments justify granting access to land and water to investors to meet the needs of development and food security.

As community efforts to reclaim 100,000 hectares of their ancestral land occupied by oil palm plantations are met with violent repression, unlawful arrests, and murder, Meet the Investors Behind the PHC Oil Palm Plantations in DRC exposes the financiers profiteering from the plantations. Communities in Lokutu, Yaligimba, and Boteka in DRC, forcibly displaced first in 1911 by the Belgian colonial authorities to establish oil palm plantations, face acute hardships today.

Stealth Game: “Community” Conservancies Devastate Land & Lives in Northern Kenya — reveals the devastating impact of privatized and neo-colonial wildlife conservation and safari tourism on Indigenous pastoralist communities.