IWGIA celebrates Inuit Circumpolar Council International leadership

Written on 07 November 2022. Posted in News

On 21 July 2022 Sara Olsvig was elected as the new Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) International Chair at the organisation’s 14th General Assembly, taking over the position from Dr Dalee Sambo Dorough, who served from July 2018.

IWGIA wishes to congratulate both Sara in her new role and Dalee for her leadership over the last four years. We took this opportunity to ask these two prominent Inuit leaders about their work within ICC since 2018 and their visions and strategies for the future of the organisation.

“The Inuit Circumpolar Council has been an important strategic partner of IWGIA ever since its foundation in 1977 and Dalee and Sara have had, and will have, an incredibly important role for the organisation; both in the Arctic as well as in the context of the international Indigenous Peoples’ movement through their strong leadership and commitments. We really appreciate working together with them and with the ICC,” Kathrin Wessendorf, IWGIA Executive Director, said.

Looking back as a way to shape the future

Since the announcement of her election as international chair, Sara has not only been looking forward but also back across her various roles in the ICC, its foundational history and previous resolutions.

“I have been fortunate to have been participating with a role at the [ICC] General Assembly all the way back from 2006. I've also attended [ICC] General Assemblies in Greenland as a child and remember them very fondly: the gathering of Inuit and the experience of recognising that we are part of a people and a culture and a language that unites us across very far distances,” Sara recalls.

As she considers her experiences with the ICC and the various roles she’s held – as a student, employee, delegate, parliamentarian – she also looks back to 1977 when the ICC was founded.

“There's a long history of hard struggle and work from Inuit leaders throughout those 45 years that we are now standing upon. This is something that others before us built up, so that we have the strong foundation we have today. In those 45 years of Inuit diplomacy, as I like to call it, we have built up our platforms to be part of international intergovernmental bodies, where we as an Indigenous People's Organization now have seats. We have access. Our voices are heard,” Sara said.

As part of that strong, consistent Inuit diplomacy over the last 45 years, Sara also reflected on the recent past and Dalee’s leadership as the previous chair continuing that important foundational building.

“We pack a pretty powerful punch. Although we are limited in resources – economic and capacity wise – our work has been possible because of the work that has been done by those who led this organization before us. And it's a collective effort. So it has been a very strong term with Dr Dalee Sambo Dorough as the International Chair with her very specialized and nuanced knowledge about Indigenous Peoples' rights, the UN system, all of these mechanisms that we as Indigenous Peoples' organisations around the world have to know about in order for us to go and knock on the right doors and be at the right meetings, for us to speak on behalf of our peoples. It has been an amazing term and it has been so in spite of the pandemic, and also in this last part of the term, being in this very difficult situation that we are in now, where there's a war going on in Europe,” Sara explained.

Dalee assesses the ICC in much the same way and the progress made under her leadership, recognizing that the ICC’s presence, relative to their practical challenges of being small in size, budget and capacity, is strong and valuable.

“We managed to do a lot at the international level, despite the limitations. One thing that I regard as a fairly significant achievement over the last four years, despite COVID, is that the ICC significantly expanded their presence in various different UN or UN-related venues. And the way I see it in terms of the long view is that we as Inuit carved out space. We opened up opportunities for ourselves at the UN and elsewhere, but never have we fully occupied that space. And so, in terms of the last four years, I feel as though we have substantially occupied more space within UN agencies and specialized agencies,” Dalee said.

While Dalee was chair, the ICC gained formal observer status to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as provisional consultative status in the UN International Maritime Organization – the only Indigenous Peoples’ organisation to have such status in both bodies.

Dalee also notes that bringing that consistent Inuit voice to climate negotiations was important even before gaining consultative or observer status.

“Here again, it was important to occupy the space we gained. And in my estimation, we delivered with substance. And even before the consultative status or the observer status, we had a presence. But with the observer status, we immediately put it to use by bringing substance of our own observations, our own monitoring through expressions of our own knowledge about the impacts of climate change,” Dalee said.

Future obstacles

As we celebrated the 15^th anniversary of the adoption on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September, Dalee notes that the reality is the large implementation gap remains between what national governments have endorsed and committed to and what they actually do in relation to securing and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, if they do anything at all.

“A future challenge is the actual implementation of the rights that have been affirmed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as ILO Convention 169 and the American Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I think that implementation of our rights since the adoption of the Declaration in 2007 has not been met by states. If we think about the countries where Inuit live – the Russian Federation, the United States of America, the government of Canada and Denmark/Greenland – there remains an implementation gap. We need to do more to engender conversations that are going to lead to comprehensive implementation of the international human rights norms that we fought so hard to gain,” Dalee said.

While this implementation gap is unfortunately a reality for most Indigenous Peoples, there are related and immediate threats to Arctic Peoples and their security. One such threat is the continuation and acceleration of government interest in Arctic resources.

“I know the interest in the Arctic and its resources is going to continue to increase during Sara's term, and we will need to ensure that the more powerful political and economic forces pay attention to, again, our status, our rights and our role in the Arctic. And when I say more powerful political and economic forces, I mean: China, the Russian Federation, Singapore, India and all the others that are now adopting Arctic policy perspectives and engaging in international debate and dialogue about the Arctic. Most notably, these discussions are happening around shipping, increased vessel traffic, security and defence, and we as rights holders need to be a part of every discussion around these issues,” Dalee emphasised.

“There is a security situation and we are reiterating our resolution from 1977 on our call for only the safe and peaceful use of the Arctic; for our homeland to be a peaceful homeland. That might sound naive in these days, but if Arctic Peoples themselves are not the ones calling for a peaceful Arctic, who should? Who would?” Sara adds.

The other immediate threat very much related to this issue of potential Arctic exploitation is also underscored by the ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The invasion has caused a pause in the work and operation of the Arctic Council, of which the ICC is one of the original Permanent Participants and plays a significant role in the council’s work. The Arctic Council, which was established in 1996, is the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation in the Arctic among the Arctic States, Arctic Indigenous Peoples and other Arctic inhabitants.

“We are very worried, of course, of the pause. We worry that Arctic democracy is now under pressure because the unique system and structure built over decades between eight very different states and with the inclusion of Arctic Indigenous Peoples in now out of function. We saw that seven states took the decision to pause the council without the involvement of the Permanent Participants. The system of the Arctic Council is built on trust between the States and Indigenous Peoples, and we do not want to end in a situation, where it again becomes difficult for us that are not states, for the organizations that have had to fight for a seat at the table for so many years, to get back at the table,” Sara said.

Against the backdrop of the current pause, reference to the ‘Arctic seven’ is but one example. Rather, the world community should be reminded that the Arctic Council is not the Arctic Council without the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples.

Climate at the forefront

Both leaders recognize the issue of climate change is central to the work of the ICC and Arctic Peoples as the climate is changing in the region at a rate faster than any other place around the world. According to recent studies, for the last 40+ years, the climate in the Arctic has been changing at a rate nearly four times faster than that of the rest of the planet.

Sara notes that these changes in climate are directly linked to and have consequences on their human rights, which is something she now sees as a major development in global talks.

“There was the General Assembly resolution of the UN on July 28 [2022] where the UN and majority states recognized the direct link between climate and human rights and that the right to a safe, clean, sustainable, healthy environment is a human right. This is something that Inuit and other Indigenous Peoples have been saying for years. Again, looking back at our resolutions from 1977, so many of them highlighted the importance of protecting the environment around us because that is what provides us our life, livelihoods and way of living here in the Arctic. We live from the nature around us. We travel on the ice in Greenland and Canada and Alaska, and for Inuit in general. So, the meaning of climate change is something that is so tangibly and directly connected to us as a people. Climate change is just the overarching issue to continue our struggle on. One thing is to continue our advocacy for the rest of the world to recognize the climate is changing and the other is to provide that constant voice from Inuit. And we want to be part of that governance that is being negotiated among the states at this point,” Sara said.

Long term collaboration with IWGIA

IWGIA has had a long-term collaboration with Arctic Peoples and the ICC. In 1973, IWGIA supported the organisation of the first Arctic Peoples’ Conference, which also marked the beginning of IWGIA’s active involvement in the international Indigenous Peoples movement. Over the years, the ICC, like many other international, regional and national umbrella Indigenous organisations, became one of IWGIA’s main partners on the international scene.

We have also had an extensive collaboration over many years with both leaders in their various roles both in the council and outside.

“When I started going to the sessions of the Working Group on Indigenous Population in Geneva in 1993, Dalee was already there,” recalls Lola García-Alix, IWGIA Senior Advisor on Global Governance.

“Indigenous Peoples were not only coming and presenting their human rights situation and all the atrocities being committed against them, but they developed a very grounded and solid legal argument on the rights of Indigenous Peoples as subjects of international law as distinct peoples. And I think Dalee is a very good representative of that.”

“I remember in the declaration process and the negotiation that took place under the Human Rights Commission at that time, Dalee’s speeches were more legally grounded than the ones of the legal experts and diplomats that were engaged in the negotiations. And some of them were also annoyed about it because it was very difficult to refute her arguments. I think Dalee’s contribution shows the crucial importance of this legal knowledge to ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ historic struggle for recognition and protection of their inherent rights are framed in international human rights law. I think she has been one of the builders of that great architecture and she continues to play a crucial role in advocating the full inclusion and contribution of Indigenous Peoples in global processes.”

In her long career fighting for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, especially on a global governance level, Lola has also often crossed paths with Sara and considers her contribution, her work and her spirit to be very important to many of the issues that Inuit in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic face in the context of Indigenous People's rights. She also sees her as part of a new generation of Indigenous leaders.

“I met Sara in the declaration process at the very end, in one of the working group’s sessions. I think for me, Sara represents the second generation. Although she was very young in the beginning, she represents, like the founders in many ways, a way of how a new generation of strong Indigenous leaders are engaging in global issues today. They have taken the torch,” Lola said.

“As a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, as the chair of Inuit Ataqatigiit, one of the biggest Greenlandic political parties, and in her different roles in ICC and other institutions, Sara has clearly had an imprint on Greenlandic politics, as well as Danish politics in its relation to Greenland and the Arctic more broadly. It has been important for IWGIA to have Sara on our Board for the past 3 years and to benefit from her insights and visions on both our work in the Arctic and internationally with the Indigenous Peoples movement,” Kathrin said.

Tags: Climate