By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 23 2003 (IPS)

The United Nations has extended through 2004 the mandate of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, an entity that some industrialised countries are trying to quash.

The 54-member UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) resolved Wednesday to put off for another year its review of the UN organisations involved in indigenous matters – and the decisions about their fate.

The postponement was approved with 52 votes in favour, a U.S. vote against, and Australia’s abstention.

The resolution came on the eve of World Day of Indigenous Peoples, to be observed this Thursday.

The Working Group is engaged in its annual meeting this week, coinciding with the ECOSOC sessions in Geneva.

Humberto Cholango, head of the delegation of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), praised the ECOSOC decision, saying it marks a victory for the more than 200 million aboriginal peoples around the world.

But now, "some governments are threatening to close it down," said Deer.

Within the complex network of human rights organisations at the UN, the Working Group was the seed for organisations whose focus is to defend the world’s indigenous peoples.

The first meetings of indigenous leaders and activists took place in Geneva in 1977, under the auspices of the UN Centre for Human Rights, which later became the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Guyana diplomat Bertrand Ramcharan, serving as interim high commissioner, underscored his participation in the creation of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, when he served as adviser to the Dutch-born Theo van Boven, then director of the Centre.

The Working Group has a unique mandate within the UN system, which includes monitoring the evolution of protections for indigenous peoples’ rights and drafting international standards related to these communities, he said.

In practice, all indigenous-related initiatives adopted by the UN over the past two decades came from the Working Group, Ramcharan said.

The Working Group currently is made up of five independent experts: Miguel Alfonso, of Cuba, El Hadji Guissé, of Senegal, Françoise Jane Hampson, of Britain, Antoanella-Iulia Motoc, of Romania, and Yozo Yokota, of Japan.

Attending this week’s sessions as observers are representatives from 25 UN member states and delegations from native communities around the globe.

The UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations, established in 1985, provides financial assistance for indigenous activists’ travel to Geneva, as do European governments and non-governmental organisations.

The Working Group itself was founded in 1982 in a decision by the Sub-commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, the advisory body to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

All of the entities mentioned are under the authority of ECOSOC, whose rotating members coordinate the work of 14 UN agencies and its regional commissions. ECOSOC speaks for 70 percent of the UN’s human and financial resources.

As such, it is up to ECOSOC to debate the institutional panorama for human rights and indigenous population, in this case responding to a proposal by some industrialised nations – such as the United States, Australia, Japan – to eliminate the Working Group.

The proponents of eliminating the group argue that its mandate is redundant with that of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, created in 2000 as an ECOSOC advisory body.

The Permanent Forum, which meets at the UN’s New York headquarters, is made up of 16 independent experts in indigenous matters, half designated by the ECOSOC chair, and half chosen by governments and ECOSOC member states.

In addition to these entities there is a special rapporteur on indigenous populations designated by the Commission on Human Rights. Mexican expert Rodolfo Stavenhagen currently serves in that post.

Also within the UN is a working group set up by the Commission on Human Rights to write the final version of a UN declaration on indigenous peoples. The draft of that text was prepared by the Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

The U.S. delegation stated that Washington had supported the creation of the Permanent Forum with the understanding that UN work on indigenous issues would be concentrated in that entity, such that the Working Group no longer has a reason to exist.

But Mohawk leader Deer, spokesman for the indigenous delegations gathered in Geneva, commented that the Working Group and the Permanent Forum work together and complement each other’s efforts.

The Working Group has produced numerous specialised studies on indigenous land rights, protection of cultural heritage and treaties, and that these contributed to reforming and improving the constitutions and laws in many countries, benefiting native peoples, he said.

Saoudata Aboubacrine, a native Tuareg leader born in Mali and now living in Burkina Faso, pointed to the difficulties indigenous delegations face when trying to attend the sessions of the Permanent Forum in New York.

"I was the sole representative of my people" to attend the two meetings that the Forum has held so far, because it is so difficult to obtain visas to travel to the United States, she said.

Geneva is a relatively small city to which native leaders have been travelling for more than 25 years and where they maintain an active presence, while New York is an immense metropolis in which activists feel lost, added Deer.

The bloc of Latin American and Caribbean countries in ECOSOC supports the continued existence of the Working Group. Arturo Hernández-Basave, of Mexico, speaking on their behalf, underscored the important achievements of the Working Group in the past two decades.

The decisions taken by ECOSOC in the future "must not punish indigenous peoples," he said.

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