By Marty Logan
UNITED NATIONS, May 17 2004 (IPS)

Hours before the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was slated to discuss human rights – one of six themes on tap at the annual gathering – more than 100 groups and individuals had already signed up to speak, although the Forum has no power to probe their claims and is limited to advising the U.N. system on indigenous peoples’ issues.

Permanent Forum Chairman Ole Henrik Magga told IPS that although most of the world’s indigenous people still do not know about the three-year-old Forum, those who do “are very optimistic, and have high expectations.”

“And I must say it is terrible to come to them and learn about these expectations: they are far beyond the power and influence of this Forum, at least in the short term,” he added. “It is very difficult, particularly with human rights violations. And we hear it here (at the Forum) also – one after another (speaker) takes up (rights) issues.”

“Today the organisations joining this statement raise our voices against the latest actions of the U.S. federal government’s plans to pass legislation purporting to provide U.S. ‘federal recognition’ to Kanaka Maoli (the Hawaiian Archipelago) but instead it creates a process to deny our human rights of self-determination and set in motion a final settlement regarding our claims to our lands and natural resources and sovereignty over those lands and resources,” said a statement read at the Forum on Friday.

“This is an SOS from the indigenous Alifuru people in Maluku,” said another statement, to be read Monday. “This is an SOS pleading for your immediate actions in the case of the imminent genocide (to be) perpetrated by the Indonesian military and the Indonesian jihad forces against the indigenous Alifuru people in Maluku.”

The two-week-long annual Forum running from May 10 to 21, which this year will attract more than 2,000 indigenous people and their advocates, is just one of many avenues the world’s roughly 370 million indigenous people travel to address human rights violations.

In the interim, governments, business interests and settlers have continued to violate the rights of indigenous people around the world.

Like everyone, indigenous peoples are guaranteed the rights spelled out in many international documents, including the U.N.’s ‘Universal Declaration on Human Rights’.

But as the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People opened in 1995, it was decided that a working group would be struck to put the finishing touches on the draft declaration, approved by a U.N. Commission on Human Rights sub-commission in 1994, to specifically spell out those rights in the context of aboriginal peoples’ lives.

However opposition by a handful of governments, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and United Kingdom, created an impasse on a number of the declaration’s components. Among other things, these governments would limit indigenous peoples’ collective (versus individual) rights and the right to self-determination.

Recognising those rights would mean granting control over land and resources that indigenous people claim within states’ borders.

“I’m very fond of the draft declaration,” says Magga. “It expresses our ambitions in a marvellous way. It is all there; it’s fantastic. On the other hand, I cannot believe that this is the only formulation that could work in guaranteeing our fundamental rights.”

“I’m disappointed in the governments, at their positions, but I’m also disappointed at the positions of some of the indigenous peoples’ representatives, because it’s obvious that if we insist on the draft declaration as it is it will never happen that we will have agreement.”

“On the other hand, we’ve got governments who really don’t want this at all: they want to draft something on their own. That won’t work either. Somewhere in between there is a compromise,” added Magga.

Some observers say indigenous peoples’ rights are adequately protected by existing human rights documents, particularly the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), better known as Convention 169.

But that treaty fails to live up to the standards of the draft declaration in a number of ways, according to seven indigenous organisations from around the globe.

Particularly, “it is expressly stated that the issue of self-determination was ‘outside the competence of the ILO’. Since the right of self-determination should be a core element of any declaration on the human rights of indigenous peoples, the adoption of the draft U.N. declaration assumes a much greater importance,” the groups, backed by a dozen others, wrote in a submission to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.

At April’s annual meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, U.S. delegate Luis Zúñiga said Washington is prepared to grant indigenous peoples “internal self-determination”, or the right to make decisions on a range of issues that include taxation, education, managing land resources and deciding membership.

“In this sense, the draft declaration is not a human rights instrument. Instead, it is a blueprint for how states ought to conduct relations with indigenous peoples … we will not support continued negotiations on a draft declaration that pretends to re-order internal relationships within a sovereign democratic state.”

Washington might not have to dramatically end its participation in the declaration’s drafting. The working group’s September meeting in Geneva will be its 10th, and it is widely expected that unless an extraordinary decision is made by the U.N. Economic and Social Council, efforts to complete the declaration will end Dec. 30 with the close of the decade on indigenous peoples.

But the unfinished document might already have made a lasting impact. According to the submission to the Office of the High Commissioner, “the human rights standards elaborated over many years and now included in the draft declaration have assumed a normative value that has profoundly influenced organisations and forums at the international level.”

Rights found in the draft, including those to self-determination and to maintain and develop cross-border contact, are also being cited in some national courts, including Canada’s, adds the submission.

U.S. delegate Zúñiga rejected in April that the draft declaration carries any authority. “Let us be clear on the legal status of this draft. It is a draft and as such has no legal standing anywhere,” he told the human rights commission.

On Monday, the special rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous peoples, Rodolfo Stevenhagen, is slated to appear at the Permanent Forum, which is scheduled to complete its discussions on human rights.

The creation of the position of the special rapporteur – who investigates reports of human rights violations against indigenous peoples – in 2001 and the formation of the Permanent Forum are considered the two main achievements of the U.N.’s decade for indigenous peoples. The unfinished declaration is said to be its biggest failure.

Alberto Saldamando of the International Indigenous Treaty Council has a theory on why nations “like Canada and the United States” oppose the declaration.

“I think that they see the declaration as an impediment to trade, to their regional development – and hopefully it would be one day.”

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