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RIGHTS: U.N. Puts Second Indigenous Decade on Hold

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Nov 4 2003 (IPS) - A proposal from the world’s indigenous people to declare a second United Nations-sponsored decade devoted to their issues has been shelved so a U.N. office can review the results of the first, which ends next year.

The decision was confirmed by a committee of the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week and is expected to be ratified by the entire body before year’s end.

The committee rubber-stamped a decision taken in July by the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), contrary to a recommendation of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which pitched the idea after its annual meeting in May.

The existing decade expires at the end of 2004, when a long-standing project to pen a declaration on the rights of indigenous people will also die if states cannot agree on its contents.

After nine years of discussions about a declaration, many indigenous leaders are convinced that the project will not be finished on time, making a second decade vital.

A new decade could be used to complete the declaration or to examine the situations of the planet’s more than 300 million indigenous people in light of the standards set out in the document, if it is finished in 2004, says Alberto Saldamundo of the U.S.-based International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).

“But the states, I think, particularly the North… are very unwilling to do it. They want to see what happens with the draft declaration, and until they get something going there, I think they see a new decade as a threat,” he said in an interview.

“I think what they’d rather do is hold the new decade hostage to a draft declaration and I think that’s really what’s happening.”

Governments, including those of Australia, Canada and the United States, have opposed sections of the draft declaration, apparently fearing they would be interpreted at home to give aboriginal people greater control over land and natural resources.

Looking back on the decade, “we still have failed in our goal to get the majority of states, as well as specialised bodies and agencies of the U.N., to adopt coherent policies for indigenous peoples”, says Mililani Trask one of 16 members of the Permanent Forum, the senior U.N. body on indigenous issues, established in 2000 to advise ECOSOC and other U.N. offices.

Eight of its indigenous members were chosen by governments, while the others were nominated by their peers to represent all regions of the world.

Passing the draft declaration has been a “miserable failure”, and after years of work the Forum is still without a statistical snapshot of indigenous people worldwide because many governments do not collect such data, adds Trask.

The suggestion for a second decade, which came from one of the more than 1,500 indigenous people who attended the Forum’s 2003 meeting, received consensus support from the 16 members, she told IPS.

“I definitely voted for it… when you look at the (three) reports that came out of the mid-decade review… significant progress had not been made in many areas and there was very little funding that had actually been put into the effort” from states.

Trask acknowledges that the review, which will be led by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) – the coordinator of the indigenous decade – could be designed to stall a second decade until it is too late to declare a new one.

“That’s a very valid fear and that’s a fear that I think many people have. It is certainly the sense I have after hearing some of the interventions (in the forum) this past year,” she said.

But a U.N. representative of one northern nation says most ECOSOC members who spoke on the proposal at the July meeting are strong supporters of indigenous peoples’ issues; they just were unsure that another decade would be the best way to advance those matters.

“There are some who want a second decade as soon as possible, and some who don’t believe that a second decade would have any value,” the delegate told IPS, requesting anonymity.

Asked if completing the draft declaration would be reason enough to declare a new decade, the delegate answered, “it is one of the main goals, obviously, and it is a priority for my delegation… but if it’s enough for everybody, I don’t know”.

The review will occur at the same time that the OHCHR is completing another review on all U.N. mechanisms that deal with indigenous issues. An early version of its report was seen by ECOSOC in July and found to be incomplete, added the delegate.

All U.N.-declared decades are subject to review, and according to ECOSOC guidelines, two years must lapse between a first and second decade on the same topic. But that requirement could be waived, the delegate suggests.

Trask says the Permanent Forum would like to be involved in the review of the decade, but has received no information on it to date.

“The appropriate process within the U.N. is to send out an invitation to indigenous and non-indigenous people who have participated in the decade to submit their comments as to whether or not the goals have been achieved.”

The IITC’s Saldamundo says that while the decade did not make substantive progress, it did establish important procedures like the Forum and a U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people.

“I think another decade with those things in place would make a great deal of difference,” says Saldamundo.

“Development has been occurring on one track and human rights have been trying to develop on another,” he adds. “But they don’t meet. There are no human rights standards imposed by the developers and the financiers, including the World Bank.”

“I think indigenous peoples in particular and civil society in general have gone a long way to try and make that happen and I think those kinds of things are important to continue,” says Saldamundo. “And I think the decade (would) give them a great deal of visibility.”