Brazil inaugurated Belo Monte: There’s nothing to celebrate!
The Brazilian government grandly inaugurated the Belo Monte Dam, which sits on the Xingu River in the midst of the Amazon. As an organization that legally represents affected indigenous and riverine communities, as well as residents of the city of Altamira, we consider there to be no reason to celebrate. The dam has been built by overlooking national and international standards that safeguard the environment and human rights.
María José Veramendi Villa
María José Veramendi Villa was AIDA senior attorney for the Human Rights and Environment Program. She is a Peruvian lawyer with degrees from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She has a diploma in Women and Human Rights: Theory and Practice from the Universidad de Chile and an LLM (Master of Laws) in International Legal Studies with a specialization in human rights from the American University Washington College of Law. Previously, she was a researcher in the Human Rights Program at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and worked as a human rights lawyer for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and as a lawyer at the Legal Defense Institute in Peru. She has worked as a teacher and lecturer of various courses and seminars, and has been published in an array of publications on the subject.