Panama: Indigenous Community Needs Further Support to Relocate

(Panama City, July 31, 2023) – Sea level rise and lack of living space threaten the rights of Guna Indigenous people living on Panama’s small island of Gardi Sugdub, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The community began planning to relocate to the mainland in 2010, but no one has yet been able to move.
 
The Sea is Eating the Land Below Our Homes’: Indigenous Community Facing Lack of Space and Rising Seas Plans Relocation,” documents both why the Gardi Sugdub community decided to relocate and how government delays and incomplete support for relocation have stalled the move and left the community in limbo. Human Rights Watch found that while some aspects of Panamanian government and Inter-American Development Bank support for the community have been exemplary, urgent action is needed to ensure that community members’ rights are respected in the relocation.