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At dawn on 15 June 2012, the peasant community of Curuguaty, in the department of Canindeyú, Paraguay, was in a state of tension due to a land conflict. A police operation resulted in a tragedy that would mark the history of this South American country.

The “Marina Kue” case, or Curuguaty massacre, refers to a clash in which 17 people were killed: 11 peasants and 6 police officers. The police entered the territory with a search warrant, but attempted to carry out a forced eviction instead, which led to confrontation.

Hugo Valiente, a lawyer, human rights defender and a member of organisations that worked on the Curuguaty massacre case, said that within a week, the case escalated into the political domain.

This eventually led to the impeachment of President Fernando Lugo, against whom it was instrumentalised.

Darío Acosta, a peasant from the area and human rights defender, witnessed the massacre.

“On the day of the massacre I was there with my family and with all the relatives of those killed and imprisoned in Curuguaty. And since then, I have been part of a commission to confront this deplorable event,” he said.

Among the people who died were two brothers of Martina Paredes, for whom the massacre not only took lives but also shaped the course of her own existence. For Paredes, this injustice drives her and compels her to continue the struggle for justice.

A group of peasants from Curuguaty, Paraguay, standing near a cross to mark the massacre that occurred in this location on 15 June 2012. © Darío Acosta

From the beginning, justice leaned to only one side.

“No policemen were investigated. The deaths of the peasants were not investigated, it was assumed they had died in the legitimate use of force,” Valiente said.

“Hours after the massacre there was already a narrative of an ambush, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office adjusted the evidence, even in violation of due process, to sustain that narrative,” he added.

Paredes said that many fellows were imprisoned because of the struggle for land.

Hugo Valiente (right), a Paraguayan human rights defender, during the official visit of the former Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, to Paraguay. © Hugo Valiente

Years later, social and legal pressure opened a crack of justice for the peasants criminalised for the massacre.

“The trial was finally annulled by the Supreme Court of Justice, the peasants were acquitted, and they were released,” Valiente said.

The news brought hope back to the families.

“We secured the freedom of the men and women imprisoned in the Curuguaty case. Without guilt nor regret. That is the most important thing, to have the freedom to be with the family,” Paredes said.

But this was not the end of the story. The acquittal had consequences.

“The judges who acquitted the peasants were subjected to impeachment. One of the judges was forced to resign and another one received a sanction,” Valiente said.

The struggle for land and against impunity

“The land told a story, which is an X-ray of Paraguay’s history and of injustices built around inequality in the distribution of wealth,” Valiente said.

The Curuguaty massacre took place in the context of a historic land conflict in Paraguay, one of the countries with the greatest inequality in its distribution. “Marina Kue”, now renamed “San Oscar Romero”, was an estate whose lands were originally State-owned and destined for agrarian reform.

“The Curuguaty case is symbolic of many other land conflicts in Paraguay, where poor peasant and indigenous communities face the joint powers of agricultural business and the State,” said Jan Jarab, UN Human Rights Representative for South America.

Jarab added that these conflicts often end in forced evictions of entire communities — a trend that has been growing in the last years.

“Paraguay is a country of concentrated landownership, it is one of the countries with the most unequal land distribution in the world,” Valiente said. “The [Stroessner] dictatorship appropriated and illegally distributed among its economic allies some 11 million hectares of land, an area similar in size to Panama.”

With agrarian reform unfulfilled, many peasants, finding themselves dispossessed, occupied land to survive.

Acosta said that they defend the land because for peasants and small farmers the land is fundamental.

For us the land means bread, it means life, because from it we take everything for our daily living.

Darío Acosta, Paraguayan peasant and human rights defender

Paredes agreed.

“Having land means that we have food, that we have shelter and that we have a community. That represents our dignity, our identity and the daily sustenance of the family,” she said.

The peasant struggle did not end in the courts. The land, the root of the massacre, remained at the centre of the dispute, but a decade later, there have been results.

“Eighty per cent of the land has already been legalised in favour of the occupants, more than 160 people have already been granted it and are paying their first instalment for the title,” Acosta said.

Darío Acosta (left) and Martina Paredes (right), with another member of the Curuguaty community, show the receipt for the first land payment towards their land titles. © Darío Acosta

For Jarab, an important milestone was the enactment in 2023 of the law that officially transfers “Marina Kue” to the peasants.

The progress in obtaining land contrasts with the lack of justice.

“It is still missing that they investigate who killed the peasants. We do not know how our relatives died,” Paredes said.

According to Valiente, the hope of the victims’ families is that the case will move forward in the Inter-American human rights system.

The international perspective

UN Human Rights played an important role by establishing direct contact with the community, increasing its visibility, and building bridges with key State institutions such as the Ministry of Public Defence.

Jarab said that this contributed to the fact that the criminal cases against a number of peasants were finally dropped, and the underlying land problem largely resolved. 

Through the UN we can also make our case known worldwide. The visit of the UN Human Rights Representative to our community was very important.

Darío Acosta, Paraguayan peasant and human rights defender

For Valiente, the statements made by UN Human Rights on the case and the existence of international human rights bodies make it possible to break through the barriers and overcome adversity caused by the lack of justice at the local level.

“Only united can we achieve our rights,” Acosta said.

For nearly two weeks, a six-metre-tall sculpture has dominated the plaza in front of Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The installation depicted a version of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker sculpture, holding plastic bottles and an infant. The Thinker rests on a depiction of Mother Earth. Next to this, rises the double helix strand of DNA. All of this is surrounded by a sea of plastic — bottles, bags, fishing nets and containers.

And all of it is a message, said Benjamin Von Wong, the artist who created the installation.

“The whole plastics problem is kind of growing every day,” Von Wong said, as he adjusted another bottle, adding to the installation. “We are adding more pieces of plastic to this sculpture to really highlight the rising cost of inaction. To show these treaty negotiations the price of inaction. The time is now for us to make a difference. The time is now for us to do something about it.”

The Thinker’s Burden was installed during the second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop an “international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including the marine environment.” The negotiations took place for nearly two weeks in Geneva in early August, with an aim to developing a treaty dealing with the full lifecycle of plastic pollution globally, said Benjamin Schacter, Senior Human Rights Officer at UN Human Rights.

“UN Human Rights has been actively engaged with the negotiations since the beginning, organizing events, providing technical advice and support, convening partners and making submissions and statements,” he said. “The hoped for outcome is an ambitious treaty that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics and that will ensure a human rights-based approach to rapidly and equitably end plastic pollution.”

However, the hoped for treaty did not occur. Negotiators failed to reach an agreement on a plastics treaty, paving the way for another round of negotiations. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called the failure “terrible news.”

“We stand with all who are paying the price for the greed of plastics producers,” he wrote on his X account. “People have a right not to be contaminated and not to have their waterways choked by plastic.”

People behind the fight against plastic pollution

“Our planetary systems cannot tolerate the volumes, masses and complexity of plastics, materials, products, chemicals that we’re making today,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “We know that (plastics) quite literally are destabilizing the Earth system, affecting climate, affecting biodiversity, affecting nutrient cycling. And the more we learn, the more the evidence is growing stronger.”

Carney Almroth coordinates a coalition of more than 400 scientists from across 65 countries who provide evidence-based information on plastics pollution, which is made available during the negotiations. Access to such information is crucial for the negotiations.

“The work we’ve done bringing science here, along with other scientists who are active in this space, has really been instrumental in help us not just understand the impacts of plastic pollution, but also indicate where we need solutions. We might be able to find something that is truly effective if we follow the evidence,” she said.

Bethanie Carney Almroth is a professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She also co-coordinates a coalition of more than 400 scientists from across 65 countries who provide evidence-based information on plastic pollution. © Bethanie Carney Almroth

Access to information needs to be two-way, with negotiators being made aware of how plastic pollution affects communities at a grassroots level, said Griffins Ochieng, from the Centre for Environment Justice and Development (CEJAD). The Kenya-based CSO promotes sound management of chemicals and waste to protect human health and environment. Hazardous chemicals in plastics leach into the environment, infringing on human rights, he said.

“We have to recognize that people are at the centre of the negative impact of plastic pollution,” Ochieng said. “These are populations or people, such as waste pickers, that are directly or indirectly exposed…and whose livelihood and health are (directly) tied to plastics. The right to a clean and healthy environment, the right to participation, the right to health…all these rights need to be integrated into all discussions and negotiations of a treaty.”

For Terese Teoh, a member of the Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA), limiting plastic pollution comes from a place of personal experience. While attending school, she remembered learning about the harms that plastic pollution causes the environment and the big push for recycling. Yet, when she stepped outside the classroom, plastic products were everywhere — inside the school canteen, in shops, in packaging.

“There was just this nonchalance towards plastics,” she said. “This contradiction did not sit well with me. I could not understand why we are telling our children one thing but practicing another.”

As part of the SYCA, Teoh works on plastic pollution from a rights-based approach — seeing the impact of production plants, recycling and incinerator protocols, and microplastics impact human lives and rights.

“I think a lot of young people in Singapore join the plastics movement because they see it as so rampant in their society and they just want to do something about it,” she said. “So, the first thing I tell my volunteers is that plastic is not just about reducing and recycling. It is an environmental justice issue.”

Anti-plastic pollution people

“The community that I come from, we don’t actually know what plastic is because plastic is not part of our culture,” said Indu Tharu, a writer, activist and member of Tharu people of Nepal.

Tharu said her community does not produce plastics and are not familiar with how to handle them. Everything for daily use was made from natural resources, such as plants, fibres and clay. But as plastic has become more pervasive, Tharu said she has noticed new health issues arising among the Tharu community, including an increase in illnesses such as cancer in younger people.

“We had never heard of cancer in our community, but now, it’s become very common,” she said.

For Indigenous communities like hers, the fight against plastic pollution is fight for cultural rights.

The challenges posed by plastic pollution cut across issue lines and groups, said Marie Therese Merhej Seif from the Women’s Major Group. The group is a civil society platform within the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), that represents women’s organisations in UNEA processes. It advocates for gender equality and the inclusion of women’s perspectives in environmental decision making.

In Western Asia, the region that Seif covers, plastic pollution is more than an environmental issue, it is a direct threat to the lives of millions who have been displaced by conflict. She cited the example of the millions of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon in camps whose assistance materials come in plastic containers; plastic that eventually has to be eliminated. This is normally done via burning, and when plastic is burned, the chemicals released are harmful to health, she added.

“The treaty will be judged not just by how much plastic it ends, but how it protects the most vulnerable including women, kids, and youth who have lost homes, access to clean water, or health systems,” she said.“And there is no global health without addressing plastic toxicity on the life of women who carry the burden of both pollution and peace building.”

Back in the plaza, Von Wong directed a group of protestors to a space within the installation for photos and chants. He said he liked that the artwork found resonance among the public and protestors. He hoped it would prick the conscience of treaty negotiators, keeping what they are working on front of mind.

“I think that having these visual anchors, these monuments and these moments in time are just one way of calling for accountability in a way that is super accessible,” he said. “And I think what’s fun about art like this is that everyone can interact with it however they want.”