RIGHTS: Indigenous Peoples Push for Restitution

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Michelle Nel

DURBAN, Sep 27 2003 (IPS) - Their ultimate goal is to set up a truth and reconciliation commission to redress colonial injustices that stripped them of their heritage.

The San, or the Bush people of southern Africa, the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, the Nama, Iranian mobile peoples, Saudi Arabian Bedouins, Maoris and Aborigines, are calling for the setting up of an independent commission to redress colonial injustices.

These voices are becoming lauder and lauder since last week’s IUCN Vth World Parks Congress in the South African port city of Durban.

For the first time in its history, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) had significant representation from indigenous communities living around parks at a World Parks Congress. There were about 120 indigenous representatives – ranging from Native Americans to the Masaai in east Africa – at the Vth IUCN, World Parks Congress in South Africa.

The indigenous peoples are lobbying to create a high level, independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission, based on the commission that heard confessions of political crimes after South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

They suggested that such a commission could investigate and respond impartially to historical cases of violations and abuses of indigenous peoples’ rights associated with the creation of parks. It would promote healing and have appropriate mechanisms for restitution.

The Indigenous People’s Bulletin ‘Our Voices’ says "indigenous peoples are rights-holders, not stakeholders". Many speakers at the congress had made mention of indigenous peoples but very little mention was made of their rights. The importance of indigenous peoples in the management of land was mentioned but not issues of central importance such as restitution for lands lost.

The knowledge and systems of natural resource management of indigenous peoples pre-dated the imposition of western concepts of protected areas. Although all states had international obligations to promote indigenous peoples’ rights there was often insufficient protective legislation or application of legislation at national levels.

It is not clear whether African countries will heed to the call by indigenous peoples to set up the commission. So far, African governments have responded by setting aside protected marine areas as a practical measure to conserve the continent’s resources.

Last week the president of Madagascar Marc Ravalomanana announced that his country intends increasing its protected forest, wetland and marine ecosystems from 1.7 to six million hectares.

This is significant in global terms. As a large island, Madagascar is home to many species that are found nowhere else in the world: 48 endemic primates, 110 endemic birds, 346 reptiles and 154 amphibians most of which are endemic) and 95 species of endemic freshwater fish.

The Mozambican government is also in the process of ratifying the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. It intends declaring 700,000 hectares of the Zambezi River Delta as a Ramsar Site.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) will work with the government of Mozambique on a larger initiative to ensure sustainable management of 400,000 hectares of mangroves found along Mozambique’s coast. Mangroves are vitally important as a wildlife habitat, breeding areas for fish and for coastal protection against climate change and erosion.

South Africa will proclaim three new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) later this year: the Cape Peninsula MPA, a 900-square kilometre area along the Pondo coastline (Eastern Cape) and Aliwal Shoal of KwaZulu-Natal which boasts coral reefs popular with scuba divers.

Mozambique’s minister of tourism, Fernando Sumbana Junior, announced his country’s commitment to establishing three new MPAs: two off the north coast and one off Maputo in the south.

Senegalese Fisheries Minister Pape Diouf said his country will create four marine protected areas, totalling some 7,500 sq kms, which should protect fish stocks from depletion by overfishing.

Quantities of valuable coastal fish caught in Senegal’s waters have diminished to less than 20 percent compared to the 1950s. Faced with diminishing catches, local communities along the coast requested the creation of these MPAs’ and were supported in their lobbying by WWF.

All the environmental initiatives announced at the World Parks Congress will have strong community involvement and opportunities for poverty alleviation.

Another important challenge facing conservation in Africa is conflict. Transboundary conservation areas hold a hope for promoting peace on the continent.

The authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon have also agreed to protect the Cross River gorilla, the world’s rarest sub-species of gorilla – there are only 280 individuals left, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Richard Leakey, former director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, threw a cat among the pigeons at the Durban conference when he accused the Maasai people of "politicising conservation" and asserting that "there were no indigenous people in Kenya". The Maasai convened a press conference to rebuff these remarks.

"We denounce Leakey’s assertion that there are no indigenous people in Kenya," they said in a statement. "We categorically refute the insinuation that involving indigenous people in the management of protected areas compromises Kenya’s national security. Indigenous people are among the most peaceful and powerless people on the face of the earth."

The Maasai peoples of Kenya and Tanzania stated that indigenous peoples had systematically been marginalised and their rights violated. The Maasai were victims of economic deprivation, land rights violations, environmental mismanagement, and forced evictions for their ancestral lands, they said. Most of the protected areas and 75 percent of all wildlife in Kenya and Tanzania were found in communal Maasai lands.

There are 250 million indigenous peoples in the world, belonging to over 5,000 groups and living in over 70 countries world-wide. They represent only 4 percent of the global population, yet constitute 70-80 percent of the world’s cultural diversity, according to the Rainforest Foundation, an environmental watchdog group based in Britain.