The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has released the final report on its seventh annual session, held between April 21 and May 2. The gathering focused on the issue of global climate change, highlighting the fact that indigenous peoples were already suffering disproportionately from the phenomenon despite having contributed very little to its causes. The report also warned that many of the proposals for halting global warming could negatively affect indigenous groups without proper consultation. In other words, climate change countermeasures could become the latest in a long line of state-supported development campaigns that largely ignore the needs and rights of indigenous peoples. Observance of those rights is often a revealing indicator of a country’s performance on broader governance issues, including rule of law, property rights, political representation for minorities, and freedom of expression.
The recent session of the Permanent Forum was the first held since the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the landmark Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007. The United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia voted against the nonbinding declaration, but their hesitancy may show as much about their respect for the rule of law as it does about their stance on indigenous rights. Whereas those four countries were unwilling to endorse a document that they felt could not be legally or practically implemented, many of the 143 member states that voted in favor have records of committing or permitting violations of past agreements, including International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169, which also covers indigenous rights.
Despite the remarkable diversity of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people, the governance and development problems they face are quite similar. Indigenous rights made the headlines last month, when aerial photographs of an isolated community in Brazil were released to the media. Early reports suggested that the band may have been displaced from Peru by illegal logging activity, which often sparks violence between tribesmen and timber workers the world over. Those reports turned out to be mistaken, but their initial plausibility reflected the constant threat posed by forest clearing. In April, the advocacy group Survival International reported on an inadequate police investigation of the suspicious death of an antilogging indigenous leader in Malaysia’s Sarawak state. Government collusion in the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights has been more overt in Bangladesh, where the military supports the settlement of Bengali civilians on tribal land in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), apparently disregarding a 1997 peace accord. Survival International in April drew attention to new violence associated with that effort, noting that the problem has worsened since the advent of military rule in 2007.
In addition to Peru, Latin American countries including Guatemala and Paraguay have been criticized for allowing the economic exploitation of indigenous workers and their land, despite having ratified ILO Convention 169. The current government in Bolivia came to power by championing indigenous rights and traditions, but questions about how it plans to implement its pledges while still respecting the rights of nonindigenous citizens and upholding international governance standards have played an important role in exacerbating the country’s tense political stalemate. The UN forum nevertheless welcomed Bolivian president Evo Morales as the first-ever head of state to address the body.
Unlike Bolivia, most countries with indigenous populations are dominated by a nonindigenous majority. The small size and the linguistic, geographical, and economic isolation of aboriginal groups leave them particularly vulnerable to neglect or hostility by both state and nonstate actors. Close scrutiny by nongovernmental or international observers is therefore essential, not just to protect indigenous people themselves, but also to gain insight on a given government’s treatment of other vulnerable citizens.
Photo Credit: Flickr user pierre pouliquin
