This month the people of Sarayaku, an indigenous territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon, filed a lawsuit in Ecuador’s highest court, accusing the national government of failing to comply with an international human rights ruling issued in their favor in 2012. That ruling, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, concerned rights violations committed in connection with seismic oil exploration planned for a concession area known as Block 23, which overlaps a significant portion of Sarayaku. The area’s Kichwa inhabitants, who call themselves Sarayaku, had asserted that the Ecuadorian government failed to consult them properly. They also argued that seismic exploration planned by the concession holder, Argentina’s Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC), posed a threat to their ancestral territory, a 135,000-hectare (334,00-acre) portion of the Amazon province of Pastaza. Three steps cited In its 2012 ruling, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Ecuador to... [Log in to read more]