The Indigenous World 2023: Editorial
This year’s edition of The Indigenous World takes a closer look at Indigenous Peoples’ rights in conservation efforts. In times of a global climate and biodiversity crisis, focusing on the protection of nature is crucial and, increasingly, studies show that Indigenous Peoples are among the most effective guardians of nature. This has been recognised by some international processes, as we will see further below. However, the reports in this edition show a disturbing global picture of conservation efforts ignoring Indigenous Peoples, their rights and knowledge.
Many of the reports in this year’s edition also note the drastic ramifications COVID-19 and skyrocketing living costs have had on Indigenous Peoples worldwide throughout 2022, including food insecurity and hunger, declining incomes and increased crime rates. Furthermore, national efforts aimed at economic recovery, and at addressing the energy crisis, have had negative consequences for Indigenous Peoples as the pressure of natural resource extraction on their lands has increased.
Much of the world began to open up in 2022 as the effects of COVID-19 abated and humanity’s protection against the virus increased but it began to grapple with a number of other factors that have led to 2022 being, in many ways, a more difficult year than 2021. Russia’s war on Ukraine and a food crisis of unprecedented proportions, alongside prolonged and deadly droughts and other effects of climate change, have been exponentially harming those on the most marginal fringes of society, including Indigenous Peoples.
The achievements of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are currently in peril, with major challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate and biodiversity crises, ever growing economic inequality and armed conflict. In fact, the 2030 target to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is looking increasingly out of reach, which was apparent in the UN Secretary General’s comments at the 2022 High Level Political Forum (HLPF) where he called on States to rescue the SDGs.[1]
As a tragic paradox, in the race to address these global crises, many top-down initiatives, albeit well-meaning, have failed to engage Indigenous Peoples, obtain their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), or safeguard their rights. This has had negative consequences for Indigenous Peoples, including mass evictions, violent attacks and threats, detentions and arrests and, at the very worst, killings.
Indigenous Peoples’ role in conservation and the protection of biodiversity
In December 2022, States adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), a global agreement on the protection of the world’s biodiversity. This global biodiversity strategy will guide global actions to protect and restore biodiversity by 2050.
As noted in Section C of the KMGBF:
The framework acknowledges the important roles and contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities as custodians of biodiversity and partners in conservation, restoration and sustainable use. Its implementation must ensure the rights, knowledge, including traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity, innovations, worldviews, values and practices of indigenous peoples and local communities are respected, documented and preserved with their free, prior and informed consent, including through their full and effective participation in decision-making, in accordance with relevant national legislation, international instruments, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and human rights law. In this regard, nothing in this framework may be construed as diminishing or extinguishing the rights that indigenous peoples currently have or may acquire in the future.[2]
Indigenous Peoples’ rights and their knowledge and contribution to the goals are mentioned in one of the four goals to be achieved by 2050 and in seven of the 23 targets for 2030. We applaud the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), representing Indigenous Peoples from all seven socio-cultural regions, for their tireless and effective efforts to promote strong language on human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, as well as on the important roles and contributions of Indigenous Peoples in the protection of world biodiversity in the agreement.
The strong emphasis on Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the KMGBF is remarkable and will hopefully mark a paradigm shift in international conservation efforts. Past State-centred conservation efforts have often led to human rights violations and failed nature conservation outcomes. Sadly, this edition of The Indigenous World includes numerous examples of such violations and outcomes, despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples manage and protect at least 28% of the land area[3] and studies have shown that lands and territories managed by Indigenous Peoples are better conserved and have higher biodiversity than any other protected land.[4]
Indigenous Peoples’ rights and role in conservation was duly recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at its Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC), which took place in July 2022. The 2022 APAC recognised that there was an outdated and damaging preconception that conservation areas are limited to those that are State-owned and controlled, without taking into consideration various other models that are often more successful, such as Indigenous and community conservation areas.
In another part of the world, in December 2022, the European Parliament and the European Council furthermore reached an agreement on the Deforestation-free Products Regulation to prevent companies from placing six commodities, i.e. cattle, wood, palm oil, soy, cocoa, and coffee and their derivate products, linked to deforestation and forest degradation, onto the EU market, or exporting them from the EU. These commodities have been linked to evictions and other human rights violations related to land grabbing of Indigenous lands. Unfortunately, the regulation only requires companies to verify compliance that the rights of relevant Indigenous Peoples have been respected if these rights have been enshrined in the relevant legislation of the country of production.[5], [6]
State-owned and controlled conservation or protected areas often employ an outdated tactic of fortress conservation. As this edition points out, unfortunately this is still the way conservation is viewed and practised in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chile, India, Nepal, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia and Uganda, to name but a few.
This is a very damaging misunderstanding of what conservation can be but it does give governments the impetus to demarcate areas as conservation areas and evict people, often Indigenous, at will. When this happens, it is often done violently, without notice to and involvement of those being evicted, and with no plan to rehabilitate and rehouse the displaced.
Governments, supported by international conservation corporations, may form partnerships seemingly for the benefit of nature but with detrimental effects for Indigenous Peoples. The expansion of protected area networks is thus often at the expense of Indigenous Peoples who lose rights and access to the lands, territories and resources they have protected and depended on for millennia.
This dark side of conservation is often underreported or unnoticed.
How fortress conservation manifests in the Indigenous reality
One glaring example of State-controlled conservation gone wrong is taking place in Tanzania where the government continues to expand conservation and protected areas further and further into Maasai ancestral lands, regardless of the human costs.
In June 2022, the government moved ahead with its plan to create a 1,502 km2 game reserve – Pololeti Game Reserve – in the Loliondo division of Ngorongoro District by sending in a 700-strong paramilitary group to demarcate the land, which led to severe violence causing hundreds to flee into hiding. Dozens of people were injured, many with gunshot wounds, and one police officer was killed, leading to the arrest of 24 Indigenous persons, many of them leaders, on conspiracy to murder charges. The charges were seen as a politically motivated attempt to silence Indigenous people and were dropped after six months due to lack of evidence. In total, 240 homesteads were demolished, leaving 600 women, children and young men homeless and, since the establishment of the reserve, more than 11,000 head of livestock have been confiscated for grazing on the traditional grazing lands.
Similarly, Ruaha National Park is slated to expand again, even though when it was last increased in 2008 officials announced that there would be no further growth. This next phase will lead to the relocation of several villages. In previous phases, government-led relocations were done without proper planning or FPIC and Indigenous communities fear the same will happen again. This was the case in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in 2022 where 3,000 Maasai were relocated to another village, creating land-use conflicts between villagers. Tarangire National Park is also slated to expand by 100 km, thus encroaching onto a village and making 2,000 Indigenous people homeless, alongside their cattle. As in Loliondo, villagers have resisted, which has led to arrests, shootings and cattle confiscation.
Reporting on the land grabbing, displacement and subsequent violence in Tanzania is very difficult in a situation of widespread media censorship. Additionally, the government is making it increasingly difficult for Indigenous people to live on the disputed lands by closing down social and economic services in their areas.
Some of the same tactics are being used in Cambodia and India where the governments are using various laws to target organisations, peoples, and freedoms, such as the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of speech and independent media. These repressions target those who protest or report on particular issues, including land disputes.
In Cambodia, the government is continuing to implement forest conservation (REDD+) projects without the involvement or FPIC of Indigenous Peoples. Further, an important law on protected areas that enshrined Indigenous Peoples’ rights to lands was amended in 2022 to replace the term “Indigenous Peoples” with “local communities”, which now denies Indigenous Peoples in the country their collective land rights as peoples, as guaranteed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Indigenous Peoples were not involved or consulted in the amendment process and are experiencing a continuous shrinking of the civic space.
In Uganda, President Museveni made an announcement in June 2022 that no people should be allowed in the Mt. Elgon Forest, which has been turned into a national park despite being the ancestral land and home of the Benet people. This has led to violence and arrests. Last year alone, at least 50 Benet were arrested and three imprisoned for using their own lands for their pastoralist and hunter-gatherer activities. The Batwa people have experienced similar dispossession from their ancestral land in the name of conservation. They took the matter to court and, in 2021, a Constitutional Court decision granted land rights back to the Batwa. The decision is, however, locked in appeal and, in the meantime, the government plans to move ahead with the construction of a road through a forest reserve on Batwa ancestral land.
In Thailand, the government continues to use fortress conservation, which has led to conflicts between Indigenous Peoples and the government as well as the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples who carry out traditional, sustainable activities in protected areas. In 2022, there were 1,502 legal cases against community members for infractions such as forest encroachment, setting of forest fires and illegal logging.
In India, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change replaced the 2003 Forest Conservation Rules under the 1980 Forest Conservation Act with a new 2022 version that included several amendments that now allow private developers to clear forests on Indigenous lands without seeking FPIC. The same is happening with land acquisitions made without FPIC for the building of private enterprises, such as factories, or the government drive to develop monoculture plantations for teak, palm oil and rubber. In one case, 57 villages protested the illegal allocation of their land for the planned construction of a cement company that would cause the displacement of 60,000 people. The country report in this edition goes on to note that tens of thousands of Indigenous people, if not more, have already been evicted in 2022 in the name of conservation efforts.
In Laos, one-third of the country is made up of 23 protected biodiversity areas in which over 840,000 people, including Indigenous communities, live in over 1,200 villages. These people are heavily dependent on the natural resources therein but their lives are being threatened by the creation of so-called Totally Protected Zones that will restrict human access, as outlined in new agreements in 2022 between government officials and security forces to “mitigate the illegal timber and wildlife hunting industries”. However, such agreements have been shown to monopolise illegal logging and wildlife trade in the hands of corrupt government officials rather than to serve conservation goals.
There are also good examples of how conservation can benefit biodiversity and people, as described in the article on Namibia – a country considered by the IUCN to be a global leader in biodiversity conservation. As of the end of 2022, the country had 86 communal conservancies covering 166,045 km2 and comprising 238,701 people. These conservancies are set up as agreements between the government and local communities, including Indigenous communities, organising the management of lands in a way that communities have the right to use resources for their own benefit. The communities can also lease the right to manage the resources to private companies and, in return, receive various benefits, such as employment, food and medicines. This model has not only increased biological diversity in the areas but has also led to population increases of wildlife, including megafauna.
Political developments around the world
Political developments and social unrest across the globe, particularly in Latin America and Asia, have affected Indigenous Peoples dramatically in both positive and negative ways, some of which continue to play out in 2023.
In Brazil, the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president was seen as a positive step for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights as compared to the situation under former President Jair Bolsonaro who was vocal and unequivocal in his position against Indigenous Peoples’ land rights. In his first days in office, Lula da Silva reversed or altered several of Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental or anti-Indigenous measures and created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. And, in an unprecedented development, five Indigenous persons were voted into the Chamber of Deputies as a result of a consolidated Indigenous political bloc.
In Peru, in early December 2022, Congress dismissed President Pedro Castillo following his decision to install an emergency government. Castillo had only been president since mid-2021. Since then, mass protests have taken place in the capital and in areas where Indigenous Peoples are in the majority, calling out the deep and structural racism faced by Indigenous Peoples.
2022 led to some stability in Colombia after elections that Gustavo Petro and his running mate Francia Márquez won with strong support from Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities as the candidates ran on a platform committed to fixing the discrimination and structural violence Indigenous Peoples suffer. Indigenous people were also appointed to high government positions. Despite this, armed conflicts with multiple armed organisations continued, leading to the killing of 42 Indigenous leaders, the displacement of hundreds of people, the recruitment of minors into the armed organisations, and sexual violence against women and girls.
There was hope in Chile in 2022 when two years of work on a new, progressive Constitution included language on the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, rule of law, as well as the inclusion of collective rights, women’s rights and right of nature. However, the Constitution was rejected in a referendum. In December, the political parties represented in the National Congress signed the so-called Agreement for Chile to continue the constitutional process. Indigenous Peoples are concerned about language in the new agreement that refers to Chile as a singular and indivisible state, thus negating Indigenous Peoples’ rights and autonomy, together with the establishment of a new plurinational and intercultural state. Further, as the constitutional process continues, Indigenous Peoples will be underrepresented in relation to their demographics.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, after eight years of persecution of Indigenous Peoples by President Rodrigo Duterte’s government, the situation for Indigenous Peoples does not seem to be much better with the election of President Bongbong Marcos – son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – and Vice President Sara Duterte – daughter of Duterte. In his first State of the Union address, Marcos doubled down on former President Duterte’s Build! Build! Build! (BBB) Programme, which has led to a huge and seemingly endless number of infrastructure projects that routinely violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights and has led to the killing, detention and imprisonment of countless Indigenous people and defenders, not to mention devastating harm to the environment. The President also called for an increase in renewable energy projects and foreign investment in mining projects, which will only compound the negative effects on Indigenous Peoples.
Threatening effects of industry: focus on mining
A multitude of industries and infrastructure projects are threatening Indigenous Peoples’ lives and rights, such as agribusiness, energy projects, fossil fuels, and logging but one particularly egregious industry runs as a clear thread through many of the reports in this book: mining. As with any of these industries, in the situation of Indigenous Peoples, it goes hand-in-hand with severe human rights violations.
According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), illegal mining on Indigenous lands in the northern region of Brazil increased more than eightfold between 2016 and 2022, during former President Bolsonaro’s regime, leaving behind a legacy of 45,586 km² of deforestation in the Amazon, one of the highest deforestation rates on record. August 2022 hence saw the highest rate of deforestation in 10 years with 638 km² of forest destroyed.
Additionally, according to the Socio-environmental Institute [Instituto Socioambiental], deforestation caused by illegal mining and land invasions in 2022 mainly affected Indigenous lands with a confirmed presence of isolated Indigenous Peoples. Monitoring identified that 1,192 hectares had been deforested and 594 alerts issued in territories with isolated peoples throughout the Brazilian Amazon.
In Venezuela, in 2022, mining was identified in 14 Indigenous territories, which has led to human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, disappearances, semi-slavery and killings. Indigenous organisations and the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela both report that Indigenous Yanomami people have been forced into slave labour by gold miners. The head of the Puerto Cabello del Caura Indigenous community reported the killing of 12 people working at the El Silencio mine in April 2022, including four Yanomami people.
In Ecuador, the promotion of extractive projects and concessions, especially metal mining, scaled up in 2022, and NGOs and environmental groups estimate that there are now at least 700 illegal mining sites across the country, many of which are on protected areas and Indigenous territories. This is happening while the country is embroiled in unrest linked to President Guillermo Lasso’s neoliberal policies, rising fuel prices and food shortages, marking 2022 as the country’s worst year on record for criminal violence – a year in which 4,603 violent deaths were reported (an increase of 82.5% on 2021).
Several Indigenous communities defending their lands in Guatemala were violently evicted by security forces as the government prioritises the interests of mining and palm oil companies over the human rights of Indigenous Peoples. Houses, possessions, and crops were burned and livestock killed, and the government imposed a state of emergency to limit rights, a common tactic used when such conflicts arise, rather than trying to employ a more peaceful strategy of mediated resolution.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, mining permits continued to be granted at a high rate, half of which are for mining rights on ancestral lands. In general, as of June 2022, 83 out of a total of 410 so-called Environmentally Critical Projects listed by the Environmental Management Bureau were situated on Indigenous lands, covering over 500,000 hectares.
Year of important global milestones
Landmark international decision for Indigenous women and girls
After nearly 20 years of collective actions and advocacy across the seven socio-cultural regions of the world, the Indigenous women's movement succeeded in getting the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to develop a specific recommendation on Indigenous women and girls, and this was adopted on 26 October.
General Recommendation 39[7] (GR39) promotes the voices of Indigenous women and girls as agents of change and leaders both inside and outside their communities and addresses the different forms of intersectional discrimination frequently committed by State and non-State actors. However, it also recognises Indigenous women’s key role as leaders, knowledge holders and transformers of culture within their families, villages and communities.
The General Recommendation has been adopted and officially forms part of the Convention, meaning that it is binding on States, which will now have to periodically report on the concrete measures they are implementing in response to the provisions set out in GR39.
The adoption of GR39 is not only important for the explicit protection it guarantees Indigenous women and girls worldwide but is also a significant and inspiring example of what collective and concerted efforts by a large, dedicated group can achieve in the face of seemingly endless obstacles.
GR39 also comes at a time when Indigenous women and girls need as much protection as possible. As reported in this edition, women and girls continue to suffer at the hands of aggressors. In India, a 2022 report by the National Crime Records Bureau showed that 1,324 Indigenous women and girls were raped in 2021 and the trend continued into 2022. In Bangladesh, according to a human rights report from the Kapaeeng Foundation, at least 22 Indigenous women and girls, ranging in age from 3-75, from the plains as well as the Chittagong Hill Tracts, were subjected to violence. In Tanzania, as part of the violent forced evictions by military and police in Ngorongoro, Indigenous women and girls were victims of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Such violence has also been reported in Colombia, Namibia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, either due to government violence, legal and illegal infrastructure projects, or the economic crisis stemming from the effects of COVID-19.
Further, in a different but related case, in 2022 it came to light that, between 1966 and the 1970s, Danish doctors had inserted intrauterine devices (IUDs) into 4,500 Inuit women and girls in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), some as young as 12, often without their knowledge and consent, or that of their parents. At the request of Naalakkersuisut, the Government of Greenland, a commission has been set up to prepare an impartial investigation into this “IUD case” and other pregnancy prevention methods used by Denmark between 1960 and 1991.
Important development in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ right to land, territories and resources
In December 2022, the Committee under the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) adopted General comment No. 26 on Land and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,[8] which clarifies the specific obligations States have regarding land and land tenure governance under the covenant, including important references to Indigenous Peoples’ rights to land territories and resources.
Most significantly, the Committee recognises that land is closely linked to Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination, which it considers to be an essential condition for the effective guarantee and observation of individual human rights, as well as for the promotion and strengthening of these rights. Specifically, it observes that, in accordance with their right to self-determination, the collective ownership of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, territories and resources shall be respected, which implies that these lands and territories must be demarcated and protected by State parties.
The adoption of this comment is indeed an important step forward in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ land rights by the CESCR.
The comment will, from now on, help the Committee to monitor States’ performance of their treaty-related obligations on issues related to land and land tenure governance. It should also become a very important tool for Indigenous Peoples when preparing their “alternative” or “shadow reports” to the Committee in the context of State review processes.
UNDRIP 15 years on
2022 was an important year globally for Indigenous Peoples as it marked the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the most comprehensive instrument to ensure the minimum standards of recognising, promoting and protecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
The adoption of the UNDRIP on 13 September 2007 was a huge, decades-long achievement for the Indigenous Peoples’ Movement and recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights internationally. However, 15 years on, there is a wide gap between what the UNDRIP guarantees and how States actually implement the rights enshrined in the declaration they have signed.
Indigenous Peoples globally continue to suffer human rights violations at the hands of States and private enterprises, who, at times, blatantly ignore the international instrument by means of explicit laws and court decisions that deny the rights of Indigenous Peoples or, at other times, simply pay lip service to Indigenous Peoples, their rights and the UNDRIP.
Further, in many cases, Indigenous Peoples are still not recognised as Indigenous by national governments, some of which claim that all people within the country are Indigenous and thus do not need the special protections provided by the UNDRIP. This not only undermines the self-identified Indigenous groups within a country but also allows national governments to circumvent the UNDRIP in the pursuit of State interests.
Despite this, Indigenous Peoples, their local, national and regional organisations, as well as international civil society organisations, are continuing to work together to monitor the implementation of the UNDRIP.
One such way this is being done globally is through The Indigenous Navigator, an initiative launched in 2014 that collects data by and for Indigenous Peoples in order to document whether and how the UNDRIP, and other instruments, are being implemented and what real change, if any, is being made on the ground. As of 2022, The Indigenous Navigator had expanded and is now being used in 28 countries.
Some good examples in 2022 of governments being proactive in the implementation of the UNDRIP came from Canada, which has started to develop a National Action Plan, in consultation with Indigenous Peoples, to implement its federal level act to align Canadian law with the UNDRIP. Further, Vancouver became the first city in the country to develop its own municipal-level strategy to implement the UNDRIP.
And in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after 15 years of tireless advocacy, the government adopted its first national law on the protection and promotion of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2022. The government is also extending this to legally securing the ancestral lands and territories of Indigenous Peoples, which should now be under the control of the Indigenous communities.
International Decade of Indigenous Languages
The year also marked the inauguration of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032),[9] a key outcome stemming from the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages. The decade focuses on the right of Indigenous Peoples to preserve, revitalise and promote their languages, as well as to ensure Indigenous languages are used by governments and private enterprises when communicating with and informing Indigenous communities and, further, that Indigenous languages are also recognised and used in public schools.
In his September 2022 thematic study on the role of Indigenous women and the development, application, preservation and transmission of scientific and technical knowledge,[10] the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples noted that Indigenous languages are rapidly disappearing, which also means invaluable knowledge and culture is being lost. He also noted that Indigenous women are key to the protection and use of Indigenous languages and supported the call to support Indigenous women to urgently develop and implement Indigenous language education programmes.
In Botswana, for example, a new National Language Policy was established in 2022 to include the teaching of San and Nama languages and will hopefully begin implementation in 2023. In Morocco, Tamazight was established as an official language in 2020 but the government at that time remarked that implementation would not begin until after the pandemic had eased. Implementation thus began in 2022, albeit slow, due to insufficient funds. And in Venezuela, the National Institute of Indigenous Languages implemented a plan to strengthen the teaching of Indigenous languages in the country.
Conversely, in Myanmar, where the country is still mired by the effects of the military coup in February 2021, which continues to displace millions, a former law that allowed Indigenous languages to be used in education has now been rolled back and only Burmese is allowed.
And in Peru, when schools reopened after COVID-19, there was backlash against the government for attempting to change schools from being bilingual to monolingual to help recruit more teachers, many of whom do not speak Indigenous languages. Non-bilingual principals and teachers were, nonetheless, still hired. Indigenous organisations have petitioned the government to ensure that any reclassification of schools must only be done with their FPIC.
Understanding the benefits of moving fast with consideration
As evidenced in the reports in this year’s edition of The Indigenous World, Indigenous Peoples continue to contend with a general attitude that they are the ones who must sacrifice for the greater good and that their lives and voices are not as important as other citizens when decisions are made.
But decisions can be made, and actions can be taken, that respect human rights and give back control to communities. They can also be made in consultation with Indigenous Peoples, who have valuable and often unrecognised knowledge that can contribute to the process.
Perhaps the largest injustice being perpetrated is the thinking that including and listening to Indigenous Peoples will only slow us down in meeting international agreed targets such as the SDGs, the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework. And yet, by including everyone, including the most marginalised, we will not only reach our goals more fairly and holistically, we may even end up there more quickly.
Tribute to Patrick Kulesza
We were saddened by the passing of Patrick Kulesza. Patrick had always had a close and strong relationship with IWGIA. He was a highly esteemed member of our Board, ensuring that Indigenous Peoples in the Francophone world were always included in our work. Patrick was a great resource person with whom we collaborated extensively over many decades. His contributions were greatly appreciated by all of us who worked with him. He was a valuable and rich contributor to The Indigenous World, providing many country reports to each edition on Indigenous Peoples in Africa and the Pacific. Patrick’s dedication to Indigenous Peoples will always be with us. Every year, he voluntarily translated The Indigenous World into French, as Le Monde Autochtone, to help spread important information to the French-speaking world concerning the situation of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. He was always positive and good company. Patrick will be missed and will remain in our thoughts.
Dwayne Mamo
General Editor
Kathrin Wessendorf
Executive Director
Ida Theilade
Chair of the Board
Copenhagen, March 2023
This article is part of the 37th 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 2023 in full here.
Notes and references
[1] United Nations. António Guterres. Secretary-General´s remarks at the opening of the 2022 High-level Segment of ECOSOC, Ministerial Segment of High-Level Political Forum. 13 July 2022, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2022-07-13/secretary-generals-remarks-the-opening-of-the-2022-high-level-segment-of-ecosoc-ministerial-segment-of-high-level-political-forum
[2] United Nations. Environment Programme. Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Fifteenth meeting. Kunming-Montreal Global biodiversity framework; Draft decision submitted by the President. 7-19 December 2022, https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/e6d3/cd1d/daf663719a03902a9b116c34/cop-15-l-25-en.pdf
[3] Garnett et al. 2018. A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0100-6
[4] FAO and FILAC. 2021. Forest governance by indigenous and tribal peoples. An opportunity for climate action in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago. FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb2953en
[5] For more information please refer to the procedure file of the Deforestation Regulation: European Parliament. 2021/0366 (COD). Deforestation Regulation, https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2021/0366(COD)&l=en
[6] https://www.fern.org/publications-insight/eu-anti-deforestation-law-disappointment-as-policymakers-prioritise-trees-over-people-2606/
[7] OHCHR. “General recommendation No.39 (2022) on the rights of Indigenous women and girls”. OHCHR, 26 October 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-recommendation-no39-2022-rights-indigeneous
[8] United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. General comment No. 26 (2022) on land and economic, social and cultural rights, https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/ec12gc26-general-comment-no-26-2022-land-and
[9] International decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032, https://idil2022-2032.org/
[10] UN General Assembly. “Indigenous women and the development, application, preservation and transmission of scientific and technical knowledge. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, José Francisco Calí Tzay.” 2022, https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F51%2F28&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop&LangRequested=False
Tags: Global governance
