The mass evictions of an estimated 21,000 villagers in Tanzania have been averted after the World Bank cancelled its $150 million conservation project REGROW. Launched in 2017, the project set out to create ‘protected areas’ to increase tourism – at enormous cost to local Indigenous communities in the area. But, just months before its projected completion, REGROW was scrapped by the bank amid mounting human rights concerns over forced evictions, rapes, disappearances and extrajudicial killings of locals linked to the project.
On 18 March, in a move supported by President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City congress voted to ban traditional bullfighting in the capital after eight years of tireless campaigning by animal rights groups. Although the ‘fights’ are still allowed to take place under the ban, matadors can only goad the animals with their iconic red capes and not weapons. The bulls will also now wear horn protectors to prevent injury.
