We are the persons who are dying. My friends, my family are the ones who go through water, they are the ones killed in avalanches. How can the purpose of this negotiation not be people? How can our voices be silenced here?

• Jannie Staffansson – a Sami woman from Northern Europe

Two environmental activists are killed every week according to Global Witness, and disproportionate number are Indigenous people

• Kumi Nadioo, Greenpeace International

Article 2 is about the purpose of the agreement which surely is to protect people and the climate said María José Veramendi Villa, Asociacion Interamericana Para La Defensa Del Ambiente (AIDA) of Perú.

“Indigenous peoples are amongst the most impacted by climate change,” she said in a press conference today.

Article 2 also sets out how the agreement is to be implemented. This is crucial because some purported climate actions already in place such as biofuel plantations and carbon sequestration projects have already violated the rights of local people. People have been removed from their ancestral lands and protesters have been killed in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Norway, the European Union, the US and others oppose the inclusion for reasons that are completely unclear said Veramendi.

“It doesn’t change obligations  that are already in the UN Declaration on Human Rights,” she said.

Countries like the US are only acting to protect the interests of a few powerful corporations in these negotiations, said Greenpeace’s Nadioo.

That’s why there is a global movement, a dynamic movement for real climate action that they cannot stop, he said.