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Mon 12 May, 2003 07:07 pm
Expectations and Numbers Grow for U.N. Indigenous Forum
Marty Logan - IPS - 5/12/03
MONTREAL, May 12 (IPS) - If attendance is a gauge of expectations, the world's aboriginal people will be demanding much of the second session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues when it opens in New York on Monday.
Registration for the meeting was at 1,500 last week, about double the numbers at last year's inaugural assembly of the body set up to advise the U.N. system on improving the lives of the planet's more than 300 million indigenous people.
Topping the agenda will be the welfare of indigenous children, and the two-week meeting will also discuss economic and social development, the environment, health, human rights, culture and education. But underlying most of those issues is the question of indigenous people's control over land and resources.
The presence of the U.N. human rights investigator on indigenous peoples issues and a World Bank representative will help to spotlight the role of land rights, say participants. The Bank is now revising its policies on indigenous peoples.
"Potentially (it's) very significant if the international financial institutions (IFIs) use this forum as an opportunity to express a commitment to deal (with indigenous people) within the international human rights framework. That could really change the way the IFIs relate to indigenous peoples,'' says Marcus Colchester, director of Forest Peoples Programme, a Britain-based support group.
Forum member Wayne Lord stresses that the body does not have powers to create legally-binding standards but adds, ''Clearly all the members of the Permanent Forum are well aware that at the back of many of these issuesà is this issue of indigenous peoples and their relationship to land".
"You have to talk about these issues,'' says Lord, from Canada, one of eight government-appointed members of the Forum. Eight others were chosen by their peers, and all of them for three-year terms. ''When we provide advice and recommendations to the U.N. system, who's to say we couldn't recommend that one of the answers is to work on access to land and resources?'' he adds.
Many aboriginal people say that access should have already been guaranteed in a declaration on the rights of indigenous people, a document that has been in the draft stage for more than a decade, while governments - including Canada, the United States and Australia, say advocates - erect roadblocks toward its implementation.
One group worries that the road that leads to the declaration could be closed forever. The International Decade of the World's Indigenous People ends in 2004 and it is possible that opponents of the declaration could suggest that if the draft is not completed by then, the process must end, says the U.S.-based International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).
"The Permanent Forum itself should make appropriate recommendations to the Commission (on Human Rights) as to extensions of time and methods of work regarding the declaration, that it not be lost or compromised," the Council says in a letter to the Forum.
"We further urge the Permanent Forum to recommend to the Commission and its working group on the draft declaration that any standard that it adopts not be lower than those already recognised by international law and the internationally recognised legal framework," it adds.
Lord says the task of the group drafting the declaration is ''patently obvious'' and that the Forum will refrain from telling it how to do its job. But it is conceivable that the body would ''encourage the working group - 'get on with your job','' he adds.
Likewise, the New-York based Forum could press for action on possible human rights violations, says Lord.
"I could conceive of a situation where an indigenous people's group comes to the Permanent Forum and says 'look, we've got a really bad situation here, what can you do about it'? One of the things we might be able to do is say, 'we think we would like to recommend that the special rapporteur (on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people) look into given situations'."
The special rapporteur, a position created in 2001, visited the Philippines in December, looking specifically at the impacts of large-scale development projects on the human rights of indigenous peoples and on the administration of justice, according to the Tebtebba Foundation, a Philippines-based group that advocates for native rights.
''We recommend that (the special rapporteur's) reports on the Philippine and Guatemalan missions be studied seriously by the Forum,'' says the group in a letter on the Forum website. ''His reports can be used to inform future processes and debates centreing around the issue of development, human rights and indigenous peoples.''
''A common observation made is that more rights are offered to transnational corporations than to indigenous peoples,'' Tebtebba adds. ''The relationship between globalisation and the policies and programmes of international financial institutions, and the worsening impoverishment of indigenous peoples, should be a subject of further research.''
At the end of last year's meeting, the Forum recommended, among other things: publication every three years of a report titled 'State of the World's Indigenous Peoples'; a study to determine which indigenous people do not have access to health care, and a working group on how aboriginals are affected by exploitation of resources, such as the use of plants for medical purposes.
All its proposals were approved by the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) along with the creation of a secretariat to carry out Forum business between annual meetings.
After being born in an ''off'' year for U.N. funding, the body will also be included in the next round of biannual allocations, says Lord, ''and what we're asking for - let's say a million-and-a-half (dollars), in the overall U.N. budget isn't huge''.
The Forum's 15 other members represent all of the world's regions.
'Pay for Destruction', Indigenous People Tell Corporations
'Pay for Destruction', Indigenous People Tell Corporations
Haider Rizvi - ISP - 5/17/03
Indigenous leaders gathered at the United Nations to discuss ways to protect their culture and environmen are demanding that multinational corporations accept legal responsibility for their policies that destroy indigenous lands and lifestyles.
''Rather than bringing development they have brought more poverty and misery to indigenous people,'' says Victoria Tauli of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus on Sustainable Development.
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 (IPS) - Leaders of the world's 350 million aboriginal people, gathered here to discuss ways to protect their culture and environment, are demanding that multinational corporations accept legal responsibility for policies that destroy indigenous lands and lifestyles.
''Industries on indigenous lands were meant to bring development, economic growth and reduced poverty,'' Victoria Tauli of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus on Sustainable Development told a meeting at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that started this week. ''Rather than bringing development, however, they have brought more poverty and misery to indigenous people.''
The vast majority of indigenous leaders, assembled here from as far as the lush green valleys of the high Himalayas to the rainforests of the Amazon basin, hold a similar view. In meeting after meeting of the two-week annual Forum, they tell countless stories about how oil, gas, lumber and mining projects by multinational business, and in some cases by national governments, continue to pose threats to the survival of their communities.
''For me, the environment is the single largest issue at this Forum, because it is everything,'' says Goodluck Diigbo, president of Partnership for Indigenous Peoples Environment (PIPE), who grew up in Ogoni, Nigeria, a region with a fragile ecosystem.
''My people once lived in a state of nature, sharing everything in common with the inhabitants of the forests, including animals such as lions and reptiles. I learnt from my elders that we are custodians of the planet and it is our responsibility to protect nature.''
Diigbo whose ancestral lands have been devastated by oil drilling and spills, says multinational corporations interested in drilling for oil and gas or mining for gold, uranium and diamonds should be legally accountable for the environmental impacts of those activities. ''We are living in the age of scientific push and technology,'' he says. ''This is a blessing, but also a curse.''
That curse has been experienced by Nana Akuoko Sarpong for 28 years. ''Multinational companies have engaged over the past 50 years, in the systematic exploitation of our timber resources,'' says the aboriginal leader who represents the ancient Kingdom of Ashanti in Ghana. ''The tropical woods which sometimes take 200 years to mature are felled at the stroke of a chainsaw to enrich the homes of Europe.''
Sarpong says the issue of destruction of African rainforests and the effects on biodiversity has been the subject of conference after conference, ''yet very little has been made to arrest it''.
''It is time the international community woke up to its obligation to indigenous people, by creating a fund for indigenous people to assume responsibility for the regeneration of their resources, and the Mother Earth will be richer for humanity,'' he adds.. ''This is a wake up call for those who care about sustainable development.''
Earlier this week, the World Bank launched a 700,000-dollar-fund called the ''Grants Facility for Indigenous Peoples'', which will provide up to 50,000 dollars for projects on development themes recommended by the Permanent Forum.
''It's cruel joke,'' says Roy Laifungbam, of the Center for Organization and Research and a leader of the Meitei people of northeast India. ''Many of the World Banks officials are earning more money than this every year.''
''The World Bank has lent millions of dollars for projects that had led to the destruction of indigenous communities and their environments,'' adds Tauli, and it should address the issue of compensation for that devastation.
''The small grants facility should not be used in exchange for those demands,'' she says.
Bank officials acknowledge that the amount is insufficient. ''It's not a huge amount of money, but it is symbolic of our relationship with indigenous people,'' said Ian Johnson, vice president of the Bank's environmentally and socially sustainable development network.
Another of the planet's most powerful multilateral institution, the World Trade Organization (WTO), is also under fire at the Forum, which has attracted 1,500 participants from around the globe. Noting that their people have been harmed by WTO agreements, which in some cases have led to the extinction of indigenous lifestyles, a number of aboriginal leaders want the trade body to explain how it will respond to their concerns.
''The Forum must support the indigenous knowledge system and protect intellectual property rights from piracy,'' says a delegate from Hawaii. ''A research by any bio-tech or pharmaceutical company without indigenous people's permission is nothing but piracy.''
Despite representation from nearly 500 aboriginal groups worldwide, the Forum is not empowered to enact laws; it can only advise the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
After its historic inaugural meeting last year the Forum, which includes 16 representatives - eight nominated by governments and eight by indigenous people - called among other things for a permanent office and funding at the United Nations in New York. It received both, creating high expectations in some observers.
"It's quite an exciting moment in terms of its possibilities,'' Marcus Colchester, director of the UK-based Forest Peoples Programmes, told IPS. ''But I think it should go beyond just talking - have bite and be taken seriously.''
For Sebastiao Manchineri of the Yine people of the Amazon rainforests, any approach to address indigenous issues will require a fundamental change so that governments recognise their territorial integrity. ''When the people have no land, no rights, there is no room for any kind of development.''
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