Member since: 2007
Working towards these commitments
Secure Tenure Rights
Secure territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples
Protected land rights defenders
Mission
UVOC is an indigenous and peasant organization that gathers indigenous and peasant communities of the departments of Alta and Baja Verapaz, Izabal and part of Quiche, so as to co-ordinate joint actions in claiming their rights to land and territory. The UVOC is a grass-roots movements working to ensure access to land to indigenous and peasant communities of Las Verapaces in Guatemala where land evictions have been and still are most severe. It was founded in the late 1980s as part of a wider cooperative movement and got legally recognized as an autonomous entity in late 1990s. It counts with over 200 campesino communities in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Izabal, and El Quiché.
Objectives
The objectives of UVOC are: to improve the institutional and organizational capacity of UVOC in order to contribute to the social, political and economic development of rural Guatemala; to strengthen UVOC’s capacity to advocate, negotiate and propose at local, regional and national level, with a focus on land- and agrarian-related conflicts, particularly in its main area of intervention – Las Verapaces region; and to contribute actively and from a peasant and indigenous perspective to proposals that are addressing the need for a comprehensive and genuine agrarian reform.
Constituencies
Its constituencies are indigenous peoples and the peasant sector.
