The Indigenous World 2006: Editorial

Written on 27 April 2006. Posted in The Indigenous World Editorial

Although 2005 saw significant progress made in terms of recognising indigenous peoples’ rights, this first year in the second UN decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (2005-2014) also witnessed an endless number of denials or violations of those same rights. The 2005 United Nations World Summit’s final document represents an extremely important step forward for indigenous peoples as it consolidates the use of the term indigenous peoples, and reaffirms UN member states’ commitment to uphold their human rights. It states a commitment to work at local, national, regional and international levels to advance the human rights of indigenous peoples, and highlights the need to do so in collaboration, or through consultation, with them.

As readers of The Indigenous World 2006 will note, this is a timely and much needed commitment. Many of the country reports included in this volume document what happens when governments and authorities in general do not cooperate with, or at least consult, indigenous peoples when matters influencing their lives and human rights are being decided. In the name of development, free trade or nature conservation, indigenous peoples’ rights are denied or violated year after year. This edition of The Indigenous World testifies to the fact that this was indeed the case once again in the past year.

The picture is the same the world over. Indigenous peoples remain on the margins of society: they are poorer, less educated, die at a younger age, are much more likely to commit suicide, and are generally in poorer health than the rest of the population. Even in developed countries such as Canada and Australia, statistics show that the life expectancy of the indigenous population is significantly shorter than that of their non-indigenous counterparts. In Australia, the gap is as much as 20 years. And in the United States, one third of indigenous people live below the poverty line, as compared to one in eight of the general population. In developing countries, where improved living standards are high on the agenda, indigenous peoples and their views and considerations are most often ignored when policies and programmes are being designed. The same story repeats itself year after year, in country after country – this year we hear, for example, from Ethiopia how the government has come up with a draft Proclamation on Rural Land Administration and Use that completely overlooks the pastoralists and their need for access to grazing land. The fact that their right to communal ownership of the land has already been sanctioned by other laws is simply ignored. Sadly enough, this is an experience shared by many indigenous peoples around the world. Their rights to land, resources and, more broadly speaking, to practise their distinct livelihoods, need to be claimed and defended again and again, even when they have already been sanctioned by national law or international conventions. In the Philippines, for example, increasing numbers of indigenous communities are getting their land rights officially recognized and are being granted Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles. But the future of some of these ancestral domains is now threatened by an agrarian reform seeking to allocate plots of land to poor landless peasants. Existing laws and policies on land ownership and land use are contradictory, and precedence in this regard has not yet been resolved.

The author of the article on Paraguay puts it quite clearly when he summarizes the situation with the phrase “the more rights are recognized, the more rights are violated or denied”. We have indeed witnessed an increasing number of national policies and laws sanctioning indigenous peoples’ rights over the past few years but their implementation remains poor, or is undermined by conflicting “national interests”. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples has identified this “implementation gap” between existing legislation and administrative, legal and political practice as one of the main issues to be addressed over the coming years by all who are committed to the indigenous peoples’ cause.

As reported in The Indigenous World over the past years, the level of organization among indigenous peoples has been increasing steadily, with more and stronger organizations, locally, nationally, regionally and internationally. Their demands continue to be centred around the crucial right to self-determination, and the right to land. And even though ever more instruments are in place to defend these rights, very little has been done to secure their implementation, so there is every reason to believe that the struggle will continue for some years to come. The pressure on indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, cultures and even survival is immense. It is impossible to summarize in just a few pages the many different threats to indigenous peoples around the world that are documented in this book. But there is little doubt that the greatest threat in north and south, east and west alike continues to be the ever growing pressure on the world’s natural resources. In the name of development or free trade, mining, oil and gas developments, plantations and the like encroach on indigenous peoples’ lands and territories and make their life and survival increasingly difficult. The strategies adopted by indigenous organizations around the world to defend their rights vary from all sorts of local organizing and protests – such as the indigenous peoples in Kerala in southern India who have picketed for more than a thousand days in front of a coca-cola factory that is drying up their water sources and polluting their land – to the use of national or international courts - such as in Malaysia where a Court of Appeal confirmed the Temuan Orang Asli’s right to their traditional land, or in Paraguay where the state has been enjoined by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to give the Enxet of Yakye Axa rights over their traditional territory.

It should be stressed that there are – important – positive developments for indigenous peoples in some regions, and that the experiences from these should be used in a constructive way. Among these is the work of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, including the adoption of the expert report of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities which outlines a policy framework for protection and promotion of indigenous peoples’ human rights. The report was published and widely distributed in 2005. This being said, here too, the challenge of implementing these political achievements in the daily life of indigenous peoples remains to be seen.

As this book goes to print, the much awaited Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (commonly known as the “Draft Declaration”) has still not been adopted, or even considered, by the UN General Assembly. The Indigenous World 2006 bears strong testimony to the need for a global standard-setting instrument of this kind, and we sincerely hope that the next edition of the book will bring news of its adoption.

It is our hope that The Indigenous World 2006 will be used by policy and development planners at all levels, by indigenous activists seeking specific information about experiences in other parts of the world, by scholars and, in general, by all who are interested in hearing indigenous peoples’ voices and concerns at this point in time.

Sille Stidsen

Coordinating Editor

Jens Dahl

Director

April 2006

This article is part of the 20^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. Find The Indigenous World 2006 in full here

Tags: Human rights, IWGIA Report