Ground combat engagements have surpassed improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as the most common cause of conflict-related civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported (PDF) July 9. The report states that in the first six months of 2014, 1,901 civilian casualties, including 474 deaths, were attributed to ground engagements, accounting for 39% of all civilian deaths and injuries in that period. IEDs, previously the most common cause of civilian injuries, caused 1,463 civilian casualties in the same period. "The fight is increasingly taking place in communities, public places and near the homes of ordinary Afghans," said director of human rights for UNAMA, Georgette Gagnon. "More efforts are needed to protect civilians from the harms of conflict and to ensure accountability for those deliberately and indiscriminately killing them." The report laid out an action plan for "Afghan Government Forces" and "International Military Forces" as well as "Anti-Government Elements" to reduce civilian casualties.

Iraq's government warned the UN July 10 that ISIS-led Sunni militants have seized 40 kilograms nuclear materials used for research at a university in Mosul. The letter appealed for international help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad." US officials reportedly played down the threat, saying the materials were not believed to include enriched uranium. In a similar letter two days earlier, Iraqi officials said ISIS have taken control of a former chemical weapons facility at Muthanna northwest of Baghdad, where remnants of 2,500 rockets filled decades ago with the nerve agent sarin are stored along with other chemical agents. The US government again played down the threat from the takeover, saying it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to use the seized material for military purposes. (BBC News, July 10; AP, July 8)

In the latest in a string of violent incidents related to land disputes in Venezuela's western Sierra de Perijá, on June 30 Yukpa indigenous leader Carmen "Anita" Fernández Romero and her son Luis Adolfo were wounded in an attack near her village of Kuse. According to reports, some 50 men armed with rifles and machetes set upon an encampment Fernández Romero and her family had established on the local hacienda El Carmen, which she asserts is on usurped Yukpa traditional lands. Members of the army and Boliviarian National Guard reportedly werre on hand, but did not intervene as the men began beating Fernández Romero and her son. Just four days earlier, another of Fernández Romero's sons, Cristóbal Fernández Fernández, 19, was killed—reportedly in a beating by National Guard troops. He was the third of Fernández Romero's sons to have met a violent death in the past five years. Fernández Romero is currently hospitalized, recovering from her injuries. She has been under an official order of protection since July 2012 following threats against her, but local environmental group Sociedad Homo Et Natura, which supports the Yukpa land struggle, asserts that it is going unenforced. (Entorno Inteligente, La Guarura, Aporrea, July 1; Aporrea, June 24)

Peru's Unity Pact of National Indigenous Organizations on July 7 called on President Ollanta Humala not to enact Bill 3627/2013-PE, approved the previous day by the Congressional Permanent Commission. The Unity Pact said the approval represents "a huge environmental setback and a blow to the democratic rule of law." The statement charged: "Instead of strengthening environmental institutions, management and monitoring, these measures promote extractive activities, reward those who violate the law, reduce fines and relax the environmental standards." The bill's preamble states that it seeks to "simplify procedures and permits for the promotion and revitalization of investment in the Country." Among other measures, it would limit the period for the evaluation of environmental impact studies to 45 days, which the Unity Pact calls an unconstitutional abrogation of the right to public participation. (InfoRegión, July 8; Servindi, July 7; Los Andes, June 29)

Press reports in Peru that judicial authorities have opened an investigation into Interior Minister Daniel Urresti in connection with the murder of a journalist have sparked calls for his resignation. The former army general is reportedly suspected of being "intellectual author" of the slaying of Hugo Bustíos, a writer for Caretas magazine, who was attacked Nov. 24, 1988 by what is presumed to have been a group of soldiers in civilian dress at the hamlet of Quinrapa, Huanta district, Ayacucho, where he was covering the war against the Shining Path guerillas. Peru's Press and Society Institute issued a statement calling it "rudely offensive to the values of a democratic state" that Urresti remain at his post while facing a murder probe. The National Association of Journalists also called for Urresti to step down. The National Coordinator of Human Rights added that Urresti's continuation as interior minister, overseeing the country's National Police, "constitutes a grave risk for the security of family members and witnesses" that will be called in the investigation. Urresti, who took office in late June, denies any involvement in the slaying. President Ollanta Humala has stood by him.

Honduran security forces mounted a major operation on July 3 to remove hundreds of campesinos from an estate they had occupied in a dispute over land in the Lower Aguán River Valley in the northern department of Colón. One of the occupiers, Pedro Avila, was shot dead in the operation and two were wounded, according to Santos Torres, who heads the campesinos' organization, the Gregorio Chávez Collective. Some 400 families were "violently evicted" and "repressed with tear gas and live ammunition," the campesinos charged in a statement, and at least 20 people were detained. The operation was carried out by soldiers under the command of Col. René Jovel Martínez and by National Police agents and by security guards in the pay of the Corporación Dinant food-product company, the campesinos said. The estate, named Paso Aguán, is owned by Honduran entrepreneur and landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum, Dinant's founder. On July 4 Dinant business relations director Roger Pineda denied that company security guards were involved. Pineda claimed no one was killed, although "the effects of the tear gas made [one person] pass out."

Some 3,000 campesinos, including children and seniors, some with musical instruments, staged sit-ins on June 26 in the states of Goiás, Bahía and Piauí at 18 branches of Brazil's two largest state-owned banks, the Banco do Brasil and the Caixa Económica Federal. The day-long protest, organized by the Popular Campesino Movement (MCP), targeted budget cuts in the government's popular low-income housing program, My House My Life; MCP leaders said 950 campesino families had been dropped from My House My Life's National Rural Habitation Program (PNHR). The group demanded an increase in housing construction for the rest of this year, payment for projects already in progress, and improvements in the PNHR for next year. "The campesino families are struggling for a dignified life and don't accept having to wait more time for reform, enlargement [of the program] and construction of housing," the MCP said in a statement. "Waiting longer means increasing the exodus from the countryside and increasing the problems of rural life."

During a visit to Brasilia on June 17, US vice president Joe Biden presented Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff with 43 declassified US State Department documents referring to abuses committed under the country's 1964-1985 military dictatorship. The handover of the documents, which will go to Brazil's National Truth Commission (CNV), was part of an effort to mend relations with Brazil after revelations in 2013 that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on Brazilian government agencies and on President Rousseff herself. The NSA revelations led to Brazil's cancellation of a planned state visit to the US in September 2013 and to the US manufacturer Boeing Co's loss of a $4 billion fighter jet contract with the Brazilian air force. (Reuters, June 17)