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INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: Paper Trail Grows at U.N. Forum

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, May 8 2004 (IPS) - The lengthy list of reports submitted to the only full-time United Nations body dedicated to indigenous peoples prior to its 2004 session is a sign of its success, say some observers.

For others, it is a bad omen.

The growing list of documents is available on the website of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which holds its 2004 session May 10-21 in New York. One critic says all that electronic “paper” reflects the bureaucratic nature of the two-year-old body.

“The early signs are kind of disturbing … especially the really constrained agenda,” says Jeff Corntassel, assistant professor in the indigenous governance programme at Canada’s University of Victoria.

“So far it really appears to run like other standard U.N. agencies (but) there’s got to be some avenue for pursuing justice other than (just) report writing,” he added in an interview.

Corntassel says Forum members he has talked to “agree that there’s no recourse and that there has to be some … response or accountability mechanism”. At present, the Forum only has a mandate to advise U.N. member agencies.

He suggests that indigenous peoples, also known in different parts of the world as aboriginals, tribal or native peoples, should take more direct action, by “naming and shaming” governments that do not respect indigenous peoples, for example.

Indigenous activist Victoria Tauli-Corpuz sees it differently. Executive director of the Philippines-based Tebtebba Foundation, Tauli-Corpuz says the increased number of reports submitted to the Permanent Forum mean that U.N. agencies and member states are taking indigenous issues more seriously.

“We are quite happy with the (forum’s) development. It really has brought most of the U.N. agencies to come and make a report on what they are doing in relation to indigenous peoples,” she said in a telephone interview from Baguio City in the Philippines.

“And it’s really a good process to look into the details of how issues related to the mandate of the Permanent Forum, like environment, development, health, education, culture, even (human) rights, are being addressed.”

Having half of the forum’s 16 members chosen by indigenous peoples has also set a tone for meetings that is different to that of other U.N. bodies, adds Tauli-Corpuz.

“We can be more open about our critiques of how the governments are dealing with us and the reports. As long as they are submitted by NGOS (non-governmental organisations) with accreditation to ECOSOC (the U.N. Economic and Social Council) (they) become part of the official report.”

During their two-week meeting forum members will hear submissions from around the world on education, health, environment, culture, economic and social development and human rights. At the heart of all these subjects is indigenous peoples’ relationship with their land – and the legal rights they have over it.

What they will not discuss – although it will be on the minds of many of the 1,500 delegates expected to attend the forum – is the Draft U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a project undertaken a decade ago to spell out those rights, including to the land and resources that remain central to the lives of most aboriginal people.

After nine years of negotiations, only two of the document’s 45 articles have been agreed on by indigenous peoples and governments. Many observers blame a few nations – the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – for the impasse, saying they are scared of the legal implications of recognising aboriginals as distinct population groups with collective rights.

For many of the delegates who will gather in New York this week, that failure reflects the faint impact of the U.N. Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, which ends Dec. 31.

“Clearly a decade wasn’t going to solve all our problems, but previous ones like the women’s decade solved a lot more,” says Corntassel.

But not everyone is so pessimistic. “I think in many ways the decade has been successful,” says Suhas Chakma, coordinator of the Asian Indigenous & Tribal Peoples Network, a continent-wide alliance of groups and activists.

He is also quick to criticise the Permanent Forum’s method of work, saying, for example, that the body must start including the dozens of interventions it receives each session in its final report, or indigenous people will begin doubting that it represents their concerns.

But overall, “I’m definitely optimistic because the issues are moving at the international level,” Chakma says in a telephone interview from New Delhi. “The decade has forced some of the U.N. agencies to pay more attention to indigenous peoples”, he adds, predicting that the results of that increased focus will “percolate down to the local level”.

The special theme of this year’s session is indigenous women, which will be addressed during a panel discussion on opening day, May 10.

When the meeting ends, forum members will submit their report to ECOSOC, recommending what U.N. agencies like UNICEF (the children’s fund) UNDP (the development programme) and UNEP (the environment agency) should do to improve their handling of issues related to the planet’s more than 300 million indigenous people.

ECOSOC will decide at its meeting in July which of those suggestions to forward to U.N. member states at this year’s General Assembly.

On its website the forum secretariat points out that one recommendation from the 2002 meeting has already borne results: U.N. agencies issued 11 invitations to forum members to participate in their meetings in the past year.

“Such invitations are an indication of the beginning of fruitful results following the forum’s recommendation … that representation of the forum at various meetings of relevance to its mandate throughout the year is one of the methods of work of the forum, and that all subsidiary bodies of (ECOSOC) should welcome the forum and its members,” says the secretariat.

Permanent Forum President Ole Henrik Magga told IPS earlier this year that UNICEF set important benchmarks in a report on indigenous children published in February. By collecting and publishing essential data about indigenous people, the agency ‘set the bar’ for other U.N. agencies to reach for.

“With this in hand we can go to all the other agencies and say, ‘Look what UNICEF did. We want you to come up with a description and, especially, an action plan’,” said Magga.

At last year’s forum, officials from the World Bank – whose support for mines, dams and other projects on land occupied by indigenous peoples has been widely condemned – announced a new fund, which would provide money for small-scale development activities by indigenous people, train indigenous leaders in Latin America and fund the Permanent Forum itself.

But, despite all of the expectations of the forum, both Corntassel and Chakma say it is just one tool that indigenous people should use to advance issues that are important to them.

“I think indigenous peoples are really savvy about how they use the Permanent Forum – knowing its limitations they use it to their advantage”, says Corntassel, by putting their grievances against states “on the record”, for example.