Campesino communities affected by mining in Peru's Andean departments of Junín and Huancavelica, meeting July 23 in Junín's capital, issued a "Declaration of Huancayo," demanding a new constitution guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the country's indigenous peoples and establishing the "agricultural character of our country, and not the mineral." The meeting, formally the "Bioregional Forum on Mining, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Health and Prior Consultation," was convened by the National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI). It additionally demanded the government declare fragile ecosystems such as river headwaters and glaciers off-limits to mining.

Speaking before a conference of campesina women in Cochabamba July 25, Bolivia's President Evo Morales said he fears a US plot to frame him for drug offense: "Do you know what? I think they have to be preparing something. So much that I'm afraid to go with our airplane to the United States. Surely when we arrive, they can plant something and detain the presidential plane." Morales reiterated these fears to CNN en Español the following day: "The United States, as a global power, has all the experience of creating setups... They are preparing something to discredit us with drug trafficking." He said agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration had pursued him when he was a union leader, and that US authorities still seek to link him with drug trafficking. "When presidents do not submit to the United States government, to its policies, there are coups," he said.

A United Nations team, including representatives from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO), completed a one-week mission to Tripoli on July 24. On the fourth mission to Tripoli since the beginning of the crisis, the team aimed to assess the needs of displaced persons and other vulnerable groups, and looked at the humanitarian impact of the conflict on civilians. "Although the mission observed aspects of normalcy in Tripoli, members identified pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance," said Humanitarian Coordinator Laurence Hart.

Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales has reportedly reached a deal with striking workers following a month of labor unrest in Puerto Gaitan, Colombia, that culminated this week in a blockade of the oilfields and riots in which several vehicles were destroyed, both protesters and National Police officers were injured, and by some reports one striker was killed. The dispute was triggered by the firing of 1,100 contractors by Cepcolsa, the Colombian subsidiary of Spanish multinational CEPSA, which partners in the region with state-controlled Ecopetrol and private companies such as Pacific Rubiales.

Frustrated by slow progress in determining the fates of missing loved ones, relatives of ten men from southern Mexico who vanished on the Mexico-US border have embarked on a hunger strike and public protest. The action was initiated five days ago in the capital of Oaxaca by family members of a group of men who disappeared on July 14, 2010, after traveling to the Tamaulipas border city of Matamoros to purchase two trucks and vehicle parts for an eco-tourism enterprise.

Days before a new administration in Lima is to take power, Peru's indigenous affairs agency INDEPA proposed new regulations that would allow oil and gas exploitation within Amazon rainforest reserves that have been established to protect indigenous groups that are considered "uncontacted," or in "voluntary isolation." Opening these reserves to industrial exploitation was a longtime goal of the outgoing administration of President Alan García. The proposed "Supervisory Regulation on Exploratory and Extractive Activities within State Territorial and Indigenous Reserves," was presented by INDEPA to the Ministry of Culture, the agency's parent body, on July 8, and immediately sparked an outcry from indigenous rights advocates. Peru's Amazonian indigenous federation, AIDESEP, charged that the proposed regulation violates Law 28736, which established the reserves, the Law for the Protection of Indigenous and Original Peoples in Situations of Isolation or Initial Contact. AIDESEP noted that the move coincides with plans to expand the massive Camisea gas fields in the rainforest of Cusco region, where exploration Block 88 overlaps the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve, which is believed to protect several uncontacted bands. On July 15, INDEPA announced that the new regulation would be suspended pending "consultation" with indigenous and social organizations.

A July report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem finds that of more than 800 Palestinian youths under the age of 18 charged with throwing stones in the West Bank over a six-year period, only one was acquitted. From the beginning of 2005 to the end of 2010, at least 835 Palestinian minors were arrested and tried in military courts in the West Bank on charges of stone throwing. Thirty-four of them were aged 12-13, 255 were 14-15, 546 were 16-17. Only one of the 835 was acquitted; all the rest were found guilty.

Nery Jeremías Orellana, 26, the manager of Radio Joconguera in the town of Candelaria, in the western department of Lempira, was gunned down the morning of July 14, bringing the number of Honduran journalists killed since the start of the year to three. A total of 12 journalists have been killed in the past 18 months in Honduras without any of their murders being solved. "Orellana headed a commercial radio station that works with civil society organizations and belongs to an alternative network of community radio stations," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said. "He was also a member of the Broad Front of Popular Resistance (FARP), an opposition movement. All this means that he was [the] kind of journalist who was liable to be a target for violence."