Community Association of Residents of Pequiá- MA

Enable the preparation, submission, and monitoring of public civil lawsuits to make the state, as well as the companies operating in Piquiá (MA) legally liable for the violation of human, economic, social and environmental rights caused by their action or omission. The target audience is the members of the community who will work in the process of preparing and monitoring the public civil lawsuit, in addition to hundreds of families who live in Piquiá de Baixo and thousands who live in Piquiá de Cima. They will benefit from the favorable legal decisions, which shall be accomplished.

• To propose and supervise public civil lawsuits.
• Social mobilization and visibility.

Piquiá de Baixo is a town with approximately 1,100 inhabitants, in the municipality of Açailândia (MA), surrounded by five pig iron industries, the Carajás Railroad in a concession to the company Vale S.A., and its ore warehouse. The village was founded in the 1970s and the industry arrived in the late 1980s. Since 2005, the Community Association of Residents of Pequiá (ACMP) has denounced the situation caused by high levels of pollution, which also affect the neighbor Piquiá de Cima, a town with thousands of residents. Since 2007, technical reports have attested the unfeasible coexistence between industries and human settlements. A report by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH, 2011) has shown the frequency of skin, respiratory and vision diseases in a large part of this population. A study of the Istituto dei Tumori in Milan has shown that the lung capacity of 28% of the inhabitants of Piquiá de Baixo is below acceptable levels. Twenty-one individual lawsuits from families in the neighborhood demanding compensation for moral and material damages were judged to be well founded in the first and second instances, awaiting judgment by the Superior Court. 4 Special UN Rapporteurs sent two formal appeals to the Brazilian State asking for clarifications on the violations in Piquiá de Baixo. The case was discussed at a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2015. A few years ago, the ACMP consulted all the residents, who chose to plead their collective resettlement in a new locality. The resettlement negotiations are mediated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and, at times, by the Public Defender’s Office.

The Community Association of Residents of Pequiá (ACMP) is a non-profit organization founded in 1989, covering the Piquiá area in the municipality of Açailândia-MA. Initially, ACMP’s mission was to organize the neighborhood residents around their interests. However, in its early years, the association was challenged with the serious violations of socio-environmental rights brought about by the mining and steel cycle that began in the late 1980s in the region and along the Carajás Corridor (Pará and Maranhã

-Carmen Bascarán Center for the Defense of Life and Human Rights – CDVCH/ CB – Maranhão.
- Santa Luzia Parish.
- Municipal Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents.
- Justiça nos Trilhos Network (Justice on the Rails).
- Imperatriz Diocese.
- Study Group on Development, Modernity and Environment of the Federal University of Maranhão, in São Luís.
- Northeast Region 5 of CNBB.
- People’s Housing Group of Maranhão.
- PACS Institute.