A/HRC/16/63 families. Moreover, these wages have no long-term security and labourers are forced to migrate from one insecure and informal job to another.60 This is the case in Guatemala61 and Bolivia (Plurinational State of). 37. In Guatemala, permanent workers on the fincas, often tied into a colono system (under which landowners provide subsistence plots in exchange for labour), work for extremely low wages. Landowners often avoid paying legal entitlements by dismissing workers repeatedly to keep them on non-permanent contract status,62 and often dismiss workers who negotiate for better conditions.63 Church organizations, such as that led by Álvaro Ramazzini, Bishop of San Marcos, help families to survive by providing food donations and help workers to bring cases to local courts, although workers rarely win, and even when they do, legal orders are reportedly rarely enforced. In one case, it was alleged that, in 1997, immediately after having founded a union, 32 male and female workers were dismissed from the Nueva Florencia farm (Colomba, Quetzaltenango) without compensation. After many years of legal proceedings, and despite two final decisions of the Constitutional Court in 2000 and 2003 ordering the reinstatement of the workers and the reimbursement of their unpaid salaries, the workers and their families are still without work.64 38. In Bolivia (Plurinational State of), despite impressive efforts by the new Government, many agricultural workers on large estates still work in feudal conditions of semi-slavery or debt-bondage. Forced labour, including situations of debt bondage, is still practiced by the private sector, including the sugar cane industry, the Brazil nut industry and on private ranches (haciendas) in the region of the Chaco.65 Of particular concern is the situation of forced labour that the Guaraní people have to endure on some private ranches in the provinces of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija, in the Chaco region. Since they are paid extremely low wages that do not cover their basic living costs, they are forced to rely on credit from their employers. In addition, women and children are expected to work, but are not paid at all. E. Repression and criminalization of movements protecting the rights of people working in rural areas 39. People working in rural areas, and in particular peasants, have always organized themselves to fight discrimination and exploitation, beginning at the local level and growing to form national movements. In Canada, for example, provincial farmers’ unions long worked in their respective provinces to protect family farming against the industrialization of agriculture, until they merged in 1969 to create the National Farmers’ Union. In Brazil, the Landless Worker’s Movement emerged in 1984 out of frustration at the extreme concentration of land in the hands of rich landowners (latifundios), the practice of grillagem (land-grabbing) and the ongoing modernization and liberalization of agriculture. Hundred of organizations did the same, until, in 1993, they created the 60 61 62 63 64 65 IFAD, Rural Poverty Report 2001. A/HRC/13/33/Add.4, paras. 27-30. World Bank, Guatemala: Poverty in Guatemala, 2003, p. 52. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (see footnote 7). Ibid. See also Foodfirst Information and Action Network, Guatemala: Harassment of illegally dismissed workers from the Nueva Florencia Farm in 1997, 6 February 2009. Bhavna Sharma, Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Bolivia (London, Anti-Slavery International 2006). 13