http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/07/bolivia-withdraws-from-un-treaty-that-limits-chewing-coca-leaf/Bolivia’s President Evo Morales announced July 7 that he has withdrawn the Andean country from a United Nations treaty that bans chewing the coca leaf.
The coca leaf can be processed to produce cocaine, but it is also an important part of Andean culture. In Bolivia, South America’s most indigenous nation, the leaf has been chewed to relieve hunger and thirst and used in religious ceremonies for thousands of years. It has particular importance in western Bolivia’s Aymara and Quechua indigenous communities. A limited amount of coca leaf is legally planted in the country for traditional use, while leaf grown beyond Bolivia’s legal limit is often funneled to cocaine production.
Bolivia presented a denunciation which seals its resignation from the United Nations 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on June 29, a move state media confirmed for the first time today.
The denunciation responds to “the need to guarantee respect for the human rights of indigenous peoples, and all who chew coca as a traditional cultural practice,” said Bolivia’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca of the country’s unprecedented resignation from the Convention.
bolivia seems to have embraced the idea that they area sovereign nation and can take steps that define it.
this is a little thing i know -- but morales is governing as he said he would.
refreshing.
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