Rockbites: UN opens doors, slightly, to tribal peoples

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UN opens doors, slightly, to tribal peoples
12 August 2001

(As a human rights oriented Web site—we’re here to raise funds for human rights as well as to expose cutting edge pop—Rockbites occasionally brings you non-music-related stories. Here’s one.)

At the end of July the United Nations established, for the first time since the body’s founding in 1945, a place at the table of international policy for the indigenous peoples of the world. Under the banner of the Permanent Forum For Indigenous Issues, 16 representatives of the estimated 150 million tribal persons worldwide gain formal standing on a UN committee. The Forum is a subsidiary organ of the UN’s Economic and Social Council.
    The milestone was first proposed eight years ago at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, and is a major component of the UN’s International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004).
    Among the issues that tribal representatives will bring to the UN are self determination, human rights violations including racism, and environmental destruction of their lands.
    Representatives of tribal populations had been consistently ignored by world bodies since they approached the League Of Nations—the predecessor to the UN—in the 1920s. The winds first began to shift thirty years ago, when José Martinez Cobo of Ecuador investigated and reported for the UN on worldwide discrimination against native persons. A decade hence, that work motivated the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, which in turn led to the new Forum.
    Last Thursday, at the start of the annual International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People held in New York city, human rights advocacy group Amnesty International said “...native peoples continue to be the victims of human rights violations—including killings and 'disappearnances'—in many parts of the Americas... Intimidation, harassment, and violent attacks against indigenous communities are frequent occurrences in countries including Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela... Even when there are laws in place to protect them, the rights of indigenous people are still denied in practice.” See our link for the full press release.
    The UN will publish this week a working paper titled Prevention Of Discrimination and Protection Of Indigenous Peoples And Minorities, written by Mrs. Erica-Irene Daes, for 16 years the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the UN’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations. She writes “...I believe that discrimination and racism are at the heart of the indigenous issue, whether this is expressed in the reluctance of many States to recognize the right of self-determination of indigenous peoples—a right recognized for all other peoples; or in the absurd denial of the use of the term 'indigenous peoples,' contradicting all logic of language and pretending in so doing that the different indigenous peoples of the world do not have a language, history or culture unique to them; or in the insistence by the dominant world that indigenous peoples do not have their own long-established and dynamic systems of knowledge and law.”
    Advocacy group Survival International also released a report this month naming the world’s most vulnerable tribes, which include the Jarawa of the Andaman Islands off the coast of India; the Bushmen of Botswana; and the Awá, a nomadic tribe living in Brazil’s rainforest, some of whose few remaining members have been killed by loggers. Survival International’s Web site provides information and news on tribes throughout the world.
    Progress in international recognition of indigenous rights, if steady, remains slow. Outspoken Québec Cree Indian chief Ted Moses recently discussed with the press the upcoming UN conference against racism, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday will place “...indigenous affairs... high on the agenda.” Moses said, “Indigenous peoples have had extreme difficulty in participating and being part of the preparation... It’s a constant uphill battle just to get into the room where so-called consultations are taking place... And if and when we do get in and manage to participate, it’s a big battle to get indigenous peoples’ issues on the agenda.”
    The UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, And Related Intolerance takes place 31 August - 7 September in Durban, South Africa. UN Permanent Forum info | UN World Conference Against Racism | | AI press release on human rights violations | | UN paper on prevention of discrimination | | Survival International | | top of page |

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