Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights

RIGHTS: Indigenous Declaration Still Powerful – UN Forum Chief

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Dec 3 2006 (IPS) - The United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will remain influential despite being sidelined by an arm of the UN General Assembly last week, predicts the chairperson of the world body’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

“Whether it gets passed by the General Assembly or not, it’s already an indigenous people’s declaration and was passed by the Human Rights Council, a UN organ,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz in an interview.

“In fact, even when it was just a draft we used it very well – it was the basis for the formulation of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act in the Philippines, and it has been used as a framework for changing constitutions in Latin America,” added the activist before the Nov. 28 vote in the General Assembly’s Third Committee.

The 45-clause draft declaration was debated by UN member states and indigenous peoples for more than a decade before being passed at the UN Human Rights Council in June. It lays out what many of the world’s 370 indigenous – also known as tribal, aboriginal and First Nations – people say are minimum standards for respecting their unique rights, including rights to land, resources and traditional knowledge.

The 195-member nations of the Third Committee voted to delay a decision on the declaration until September 2007, a move condemned by many indigenous peoples and human rights groups. Tauli-Corpuz, who has represented Asia on the advisory Permanent Forum since its inaugural session in 2002, told IPS a yes vote in the committee and confirmation in the Assembly’s plenary session would have set a solid framework for the second UN decade on indigenous peoples, which started in 2006. But she suggested the document “will still have the weight of customary international law”.

The Permanent Forum chief was in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu for a workshop hosted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) to gauge the results of the first UN indigenous decade in Asia.

Her assessment? “You can’t really generalise. In some countries there was an impact – in the Philippines we came up with the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act – but in some countries there were no clear policies or programs related to the decade… what really determined what happened in these countries was how active indigenous peoples themselves were.

In China, the central government took some steps to address its obligations in international conventions to recognise the human rights of ethnic minorities, according to researcher Li Yungxiang. But all of the decision-making flowed from the top downwards, he told about 20 people at the workshop.

Forty-five percent of China’s minority population lives in southwest provinces, including Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizou and Guangxi. The area “has the largest concentration of absolute and relative poverty within China, and within Southwest China, poverty is still concentrated in ethnic minority areas,” added Li.

On paper, the central government – which does not recognise the concept “indigenous people” and uses “ethnic minorities” instead – has taken steps to empower the 32 officially recognised groups in China, which range in size from 6,000 to 17 million people. But within minority autonomy areas for example, real power rests with the Communist Party and there is no rule that local leaders must be from ethnic groups, according to Li.

The Bangladesh government did not mark the first UN decade but in recent years “at least the government is not denying the existence of indigenous peoples; they are keeping silent,” activist Sanjeeb Drong told the workshop.

Dec. 2 was the ninth anniversary of the signing of a peace treaty between the central government and the indigenous people of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). But despite that agreement, the area remains under emergency rule and authorities continue to resettle people from the country’s crowded plains region in the CHT. In 1947, indigenous people made up more than half of the Tracts’ population; today they are a minority, said Drong.

Nepal has 59 recognised indigenous groups, which officially account for almost 40 percent of the population of 27 million people. For decades they have criticised so-called ‘upper caste’ groups (according to Hindu dogma) for monopolising state power and resources. That criticism was renewed two weeks ago when the peace treaty signed between the government and former Maoist rebels ending a 10-year uprising failed to recognise their grievances.

But last week Maoist leader Prachanda announced that 80 percent of his party’s members of parliament in the upcoming interim government would be from indigenous groups. The Maoists also remain committed to transforming centralised Nepal into a federal state where indigenous people would rule autonomous regions with control over almost all matters except defence and foreign affairs, Prachanda added in a speech here.

According to Tauli-Corpuz, few people are aware of the status of indigenous people in Nepal: “Sadly, indigenous people’s participation in bringing about change in countries like Nepal is not really visible.”