Bolivia's Congress April 9 approved the "overall content" of an electoral law—hours after President Evo Morales went on hunger strike to protest efforts by opposition lawmakers to block the bill. Lawmakers must still vote on the details of the election reform law, which is seen helping the left-wing president in a general election in December by assigning more seats to poor, rural areas where he is popular. Morales remains on hunger strike.

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was found guilty of committing human rights abuses during his 1990-2000 rule by a special court in Lima April 7. Fujimori, who maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings, was convicted on charges of approving the November 1991 killing of 15 people in Lima's Barrios Altos neighborhood and the July 1992 kidnapping and murder of 10 people from Lima's La Cantuta University. Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison and plans to appeal.

On March 18, the mayor of the municipality of Libertador in Caracas, Jorge Rodriguez, from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), signed an agreement with Coca-Cola to take over its land located in the low-income suburb of Catia, and use it for public housing.

Indigenous leaders delivered a lawsuit in Quito in late March before Ecuador's Constitutional Court asking that the country's new mining law be declared unconstitutional. The case is the next step that the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) is taking to try to put the brakes on large scale metal mining which has achieved unwavering support from President Rafael Correa's administration.

The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights issued a report March 25 finding that opponents of Bolivian President Evo Morales were responsible for some of the Andean country's worst human rights violations last year. The report found that pro-autonomy forces in Bolivia's eastern lowlands were behind political violence in September that killed 11 people in the Pando department.

Some 50,000 Colombians who have fled war and insecurity in their homeland and settled in northern Ecuador will be able to register under a new program being carried out by the government with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The $2 million Enhanced Registration project, launched this week in the small community of Muisne, Esmeraldas province, and will continue for at least a year and cover every province along Ecuador's northern border. UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said the program is "unprecedented" in Latin America.

Local human rights groups report that more than 300 families have been displaced from their lands by the Peruvian armed forces' Plan "Excelencia 777," launched earlier this month to take control of Vizcatán zone, considered a stronghold of narco-trafficking and "terrorist" organizations in the Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers (VRAE).

In a move apparently aimed at appeasing US Congressional opposition to the free trade agreement, Bogotá has ordered nine palm oil companies to return thousands of acres to displaced Afro-Colombian peasants in Chocó department. The Prosecutor General's office is investigating the firms' operators on accusations of homicide, land theft and forced displacement.