UNODC supports the Munduruku community with new communal spaces to combat illegal mining and promote territorial surveillance. The initiative also promotes economic alternatives to mining, aiming to reduce crimes such as human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Nova Trairão village, Munduruku Indigenous Land (PA), 30 October 2024 - Located on the banks of the Tapajós River in the Brazilian Amazon, Nova Trairão village is home to assemblies, associations and organised movements of the Munduruku people that promote community responses to the invasion of their territory by illegal gold mining.
Today, the Munduruku Indigenous Land (TI) - demarcated in 2004, in an area close to the municipality of Jacareacanga, in western Pará - is one of the indigenous territories most impacted by illegal gold mining in Brazil: it suffers from deforestation; contamination of rivers and the poisoning of the population by mercury; and the co-opting of workers in a labour sector vulnerable to human trafficking for the purposes of slave labour and sexual exploitation.
From 16 to 24 October, the village of Nova Trairão hosted a workshop promoted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Brazil, bringing together around 70 members of the Munduruku community, including chiefs, leaders, builders and young people, who travelled from their villages to follow the work and discussions.
The activity, promoted by the Tapajós Project with the support of the SAR-TI Project, both from UNODC Brazil, aims to redesign the Resistance Training Centre and other collective structures in the village, strengthening the indigenous organisations of the Upper Tapajós. The new or renovated spaces will be equipped to house georeferencing and territorial monitoring technologies and will serve as venues for assemblies, training, meetings and community decisions, promoting greater autonomy and organisational capacity in the promotion of territorial surveillance and crime prevention.
This initiative fulfils a demand from the Munduruku leaders, with whom UNODC has been working since 2023. After stages of listening, consultation and identification of protection and territorial surveillance needs with the communities and associations, six organisations - such as the Wakoborũn Munduruku Women's Association - will have their offices structured in Nova Trairão. The audiovisual collective's house will be changed, with an extension to be built for the new territorial surveillance space to prevent violence and crime on indigenous land.
Integrating traditional knowledge with formal architectural techniques, the workshop deepened debates about new solutions and improvements in the art of building - with participants saying that they will take what was discussed back to their villages, in a process of disseminating knowledge throughout the territory.
Economic alternatives to mining - As well as restructuring Munduruku spaces, the Tapajós Project, in the context of its partnership with the indigenous organisations of the Upper Tapajós, plans to directly support alternative development initiatives and sustainable production chains that function as economic alternatives to illegal mining.
The aim is to reduce the incidence of illegal mining and prevent crimes related to the activity - including preventing the indigenous population from being vulnerable to human trafficking for the purposes of slave labour and sexual exploitation. At a meeting held in August in the village of Nova Trairão, the leaders indicated viable production chains, ways of structuring them locally and the need for ongoing training.
Tapajós Project - TAPAJÓS is a project implemented since 2021 by UNODC Brazil, as part of its mandate to assist countries in the implementation of the UN Protocol on Trafficking in Persons (TiP), with funding from the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J-TIP).
The first phase of the project (2021-2023) aimed to calculate the prevalence of human trafficking and slave labour in gold mines in the Tapajós river basin, in the state of Pará. Based on this evidence, the second phase (2023-26) of the project plans to implement a series of activities and interventions - co-produced with local partners - to prevent and reduce these crimes.
SAR-TI - SAR-TI is a UNODC Brazil initiative supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) of the Government of Italy. The project aims to support and foster the articulation of indigenous associations and organisations, government institutions and civil society for the structuring, strengthening and integration of mechanisms for preparation, monitoring, early warning and response to environmental and other crimes in indigenous territories, with a focus on areas affected by illegal gold mining in the Amazon.
