18 Januar 2010

The first ever UN publication on the state of the world's indigenous reveals alarming statistics on how indigenous peoples are faring in areas like health, education, poverty and human rights.  Indigenous peoples make up one third of the world's poorest.  Most indicators show they suffer disproportionately compared to non-indigenous and face systematic discrimination and exclusion. The report released on Thursday, 14 January, is not your regular UN publication filled with cold statistics, it relates real life stories of people.

 Read and download from the website of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous peoples

Speaking at a workshop on communal rights jointly organized by the State Environment Ministry and the Alliance of Archipelagic Indigenous People (AMAN) here on Thursday, Hatta said that recognizing communal rights was crucial to understanding the communal rights of tribal communities and ending frequent conflict between tribes and mining and forestry companies nationwide.

So far, the Forestry Ministry and the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry have ignored communal rights by issuing mining permits and forest concessions.

  Read more (The Jakarta Post)

Chile’s Supreme Court last week handed down a landmark ruling on indigenous water rights in a case that pitted Region I Aymara communities against Agua Mineral Chusmiza, a company seeking the rights to bottle and sell freshwater from a source used historically by Aymara indigenous residents. The Court’s unanimous decision invokes ILO Convention 169 and could have far reaching consequences for Chile’s mining industry.

 Read more (The Santiago Times)

 Visit UNDEF web site
 Download guidelines for applicants

      adequate housing in the U.S."

The Peruvian government's unprecedented attempt to destroy the country's Amazon indigenous movement has been condemned by indigenous leaders around the world. The wave of condemnation comes after it was revealed that the government plans to disband Peru's national organization for Amazonian indigenous peoples, the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest ( AIDESEP).

"If you target AIDESEP you're targeting all indigenous people—not just those in the Amazon or Peru but all over the world," said a statement from the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), an alliance representing indigenous peoples in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. CAOI called the attempt to disband AIDESEP "absurd" and further evidence of the government's "racist" policies.

 Read pronouncement by Pronouncement by the Andean and  

      Amazonian Peoples (Peru en Movimiento)
 "World indigenous leaders condemn Peru's Amazon

      repression" (World War 4 Report)
 "Peru's government retires its petition of annulment of

       AIDESEP" (Living in Peru Blog)

Indigenous Peoples arrived in Rome on Friday to participitate in the Global Indigenous Peoples' Food Sovereignty Forum, taking place from November 13^th to 16^th. The Forum is a part of “People's Food Sovereignty Now!”, the Civil Society Organizations' forum, parallel to the United Nations World Summit on Food Security, from November 16^th to 18^th at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.

Indigenous Peoples came from places as diverse as the Amazon rainforest to the Arctic homeland of the Saami to the deserts of Africa, the islands of the Pacific and the mountains of the Himalayas to sound the alarm on the dire effects suffered by their communities from the food crisis. Their communities are the most impacted by hunger and malnutrition, constituting a violation of their right to food. Indigenous knowledge and practices have the potential to improve local and global food security but have not been recognized and have been met with opposition in many cases.

 
 Read more

 Download the statement (pdf)

In several of its recommendations, the committee addresses restrictions and repression that non-governmental organisations are subjected to. With regard the indigenous peoples, the committee notes its concern about several key threats, such as the removal of legal guarantees to land and resources, the granting of licenses over fishing grounds traditionally used by indigenous peoples to private businesses and the impact of the dismantling of formerly autonomous territories inhabited by indigenous peoples such as Evenkia, Koryakia and Taimyr . It requests that The State party should provide, in its next periodic report, detailed information on the impact of these measures upon the traditional habitat, way of life and economic activities of indigenous peoples in the State party as well as on their enjoyment of rights guaranteed under article 27 of the Covenant.

 Concluding observations on the Russian Federation, see par. 28 for indigenous peoples (MS Word)
 Full documentation of 97 Session of HRC

1 November 2009

Today, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing will do something only one sitting U.S. president ever has done: Visit the sprawling and impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik is visiting as part of a tour of some of America's worst housing, from New York and Los Angeles to post-Katrina New Orleans to the slums of Chicago to Pine Ridge.

Pine Ridge, an 11,000-square-mile reservation of almost 20,000 people, stands tantalizingly within sight of the rich Black Hills. Torturously may be a more apt word: The Black Hills, according to a 1980 Supreme Court ruling, were stolen from the Lakota Sioux tribes now confined to the arid plains beside their old homeland.

 Press release by the International Indian Treaty Council
 Rapid City Journal: U.N. takes testimony on inadequate housing on reservations
 Commentary by the Star Tribune

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian police said Saturday they had arrested a native leader who set up roadblocks in Borneo to stop a logging firm from encroaching on their ancestral land.

Ondie Jugah, 55, from the Iban indigenous group, was among a group of 10 people who have mounted a blockade since early this week in the interior of eastern Sarawak state, on Borneo island.

Police said Ondie was detained late Friday after he refused to remove the blockade, following complaints filed by the logging company.

 Read more (Google news)

For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have herded their reindeer along the Yamal peninsula. But their survival in this remote region of north-west Siberia is under serious threat from climate change as Russia's ancient permafrost melts.

 Read more (The Guardian)

The talks, which wrapped up on Friday, were full of speeches about public participation and people's rights to take part in the decision-making process, but the indigenous people's core demands had been left untouched, said Kittisak Rattanakrajangsri, a member of the Network of Indigenous People in Thailand.

The Rainforest Foundation Norway has recently published the English edition of a book on small education projects in the Amazon. The book  Schools in the rainforest is available for free download in PDF format.

In 1992, the Rainforest Foundation Norway started to engage in education projects for indigenous peoples in Brazil because many indigenous communities felt a need to handle the interaction with and the pressures from the outside world in a better way. They set out to develop an educational system which would combine respect for knowledge, culture, language and social values of each indigenous group with the provision of new skills and knowledge necessary for dealing with those new challenges. The approach would have to culturally sensitive, bilingual and definitely innovative, states Lars Løvold, Director of RFN in the introduction to the book. The book is based on four evaluations: among the Yanomami, in Rio Negro, in Xingu and in Acre. It is written by Eva Marion Johannessen, a Norwegian consultant, researcher, writer with and educational psychologist

 Download the publication (Rainforest Foundation Norway)

The international Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission carried out its third mission to Bangladesh August 10-18, 2009. In its report from the mission, the CHT Commission puts forward recommendations to the Government for immediate consideration focusing on developing a time-bound action plan for the implementation of all provisions of the CHT Peace Accord, solving the land disputes in an appropriate manner, enhancing the powers of the civil administration in the CHT and protecting human rights and ensuring access to justice in the CHT.

  Download the report (PDF)