Loss of land and natural resources undermine economic security, sociocultural cohesion and human dignity of indigenous peoples around the world. Territorial self-governance, mobilisation, rights-awareness and legal strategies are helping to protect indigenous peoples and their land.

Indigenous peoples worldwide share connectedness with nature. The culture and identity of indigenous peoples are rooted in their land. Losing it means loss of identity.

Therefore indigenous peoples have long stood at the frontline of resistance against land grabbing caused by for example deforestation; mineral, oil, and gas extraction; and the expansion of plantations, national parks, agribusiness, dams and infrastructure.

By uniting and organising themselves, indigenous peoples are protecting their territories from the influx of businesses, settlers, other dominant or armed groups. However, indigenous peoples’ resistance has in many cases been answered with brutality and even murder.  

Indigenous peoples are being uprooted

The global race for economic growth and the increasing material consumption and trade have consequences for indigenous peoples. Their lands and territories have been appropriated, grabbed, sold, leased or simply plundered and polluted by governments, private companies and powerful individuals.

Many indigenous peoples have also been uprooted from their land through discriminatory government policies or armed conflict.

With the loss of land and natural resources follows a loss of traditional livelihood practices. With that the inter-generational transfer of traditional knowledge, the undermining of social organisation and traditional institutions, and of cultural and spiritual practices. All of which causes poverty, social disintegration, and loss of human dignity.

Land grabbing and lack of recognition

Land grabbing causes forced evictions and other forms of gross human rights abuses, which happen on a large scale in Africa and Asia. Land grabbing is driven by very strong forces and is exacerbated by the fact that many indigenous peoples suffer from a weak legal protection of their lands.

In Africa and Asia, very few countries have ratified ILO Convention 169, and almost no countries have legal frameworks providing for the recognition and protection of indigenous peoples’ lands. Where legal frameworks exist, the implementation is very weak or non-existent.

Indigenous peoples in many cases share collective land rights, but this ownership of the lands is not properly documented or officially recognized. Therefore indigenous peoples’ lands are often seen as fertile ground for natural resource exploitation since there is no ‘visible’ use or occupation of the land – or simply because the use of the land is not seen as profitable/adequate.

Almost all countries in Latin America have ratified ILO Convention 169, but real consultation based on the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent rarely occurs. 

Due to their political and economic marginalization, indigenous peoples have in general little control over their lands and territories and the way these are being governed by the states.

Strong and resilient indigenous peoples

While huge threats and land dispossession is one side of the coin, the other side is that indigenous peoples have proven to be strong, resilient and able to organise and defend themselves.

This agency is demonstrated by the fact that indigenous peoples are still there. They still occupy many of their ancestral territories, they maintain to a large extent their unique cultures, and they are the guardians of much of the world’s cultural and biological diversity.

Indigenous peoples are no longer struggling alone but have organised themselves in a joint global movement. They have secured their rights in international law and play active roles in major international processes affecting their rights and livelihoods.

Territorial self-government and legal victories

In Latin America, indigenous peoples have in countries such as Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia won territorial self-governance building on the fundamental principle of self-determination within the international indigenous peoples’ rights legal framework.

Greenland's self-rule has been an important source of inspiration for the self-governing territories. In Africa, Asia and Russia, there are discussions on decentralisation, local governance and political representation of indigenous peoples.

Within the regional human rights systems such as the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Inter-American Human Rights system, indigenous peoples have won historic victories of the right to land.

Tags: Land rights