Indigenous Peoples and the Right to Development

International Indian Treaty Council

CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

	“WORKING FOR THE RIGHTS AND RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES"

United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 18th Session
July 23 - July 27, 2000
Item # 4: "Indigenous Peoples and the Right to Development"
Joint Statement by the International Indian Treaty Council and the Kuna Youth Movement
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Thank you Madame Chair.

The UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development nearly twenty-five years ago. Article 1 of the Declaration states that the right to development is an inalienable human right for all peoples "in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized." Article 1 also states that the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, and "full sovereignty over their wealth and natural resources," are fundamental to the right to development.

With respect to Indigenous Peoples, the 1990 UN Global Consultation on the Right to Development stated that, "the most destructive and prevalent abuses of Indigenous Rights are the direct consequences of development strategies that fail to respect their fundamental right of self-determination." The International Indian Treaty Council affirms this statement, and calls the attention of this Working Group to the vast numbers of ongoing current examples around the world far too numerous to mention here, in which Indigenous Peoples' lands, cultures, food security, traditional means of subsistence, and very survival are threatened by imposed development in which they have no voice or rights of refusal. In a majority of these cases, state governments do little to halt the actions of multinational companies, or are in direct collaboration with them while Indigenous communities are displaced and their health and subsistence is undermined by mining, oil drilling, military operation, damming, deforestation, and toxic contamination by pesticides and other pollutants.

Indigenous Peoples are often viewed as barriers to so-called progress, and their rights and communities are swept aside with little hesitation or redress within the state systems. Clearly, Indigenous Peoples around the word require and deserve the attention and the intervention of the world community as they stand in defense of their homelands, human rights and way of life in the face of imposed development and resource extraction.

For example, since June 3 of this year the Dene Sulene Peoples of Cold Lake First Nation and Clearwater River in Alberta Canada have been peacefully occupying their traditional homelands bordering the Primrose lake Air Weapons Range. This area continues to be decimated not only by bombing practice by the Canadian military but by oil development and timber clear cutting that contaminates their traditional and Treaty lands and waters, drives away the game animals on which they depend for their traditional subsistence, and destroys the forest ecosystems that has sustained them since time immemorial. In 1952 the Dene Sulene of Cold Lake were removed from their traditional lands by the Canadian govenment with the understanding that the land would be used by the Canadian military for national defense purposes. A 21 year lease was agreed to with the understanding the after this time the land would be returned to the Cold Lake Dene community.
Instead, forty nine years later, the Canadian government decided to offer an Land claim settlement of $25,000,000, after it had already extracted billions of dollars in oil and gas from these lands, without the consent of the Dene community. The community members requested that the IITC make known to this body that the impact of these actions by the Canadian government represents "a loss of a way of life [that] has devastated our People in a very negative way economically, socially, culturally and spiritually". The majority of Dene Peoples of this area do not want monetary compensation, which cannot begin to make up for this devastating loss. They want the Canadian government to return these lands so that the ecosystem and their subsistence way of life can begin to be restored.

In this regard the IITC and MJK remind the world community that the Gwich'in People of Alaska and Canada also continue to stand united in opposition to plans promoted by US President George W. Bush and his pro-oil allies in the US Congress for oil exploration in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, the birthing place of the Porcupine Caribou herd which provides food security as well as cultural and spiritual foundation for their Nation.

The IITC and our affiliate the Kuna Youth Movement of Panama, call the attention of the Working Group to the profound concerns of Indigenous Peoples regarding the so-called "Plan Puebla-Panama" proposed by President Vicente Fox of Mexico, to "generate employment and bring social development to the poorest parts of the Americas", which are inhabited by a great majority of Indigenous Peoples.

The Indigenous Peoples of Panama have already experienced the devastating impacts of imposed development and its empty promise of prosperity for their areas. One example is the hydroelectric dam de Bayano built in 1972. To this day the Kuna communities are waiting for compensation promised by the government of Panama for flooding of large areas of their homelands, displacing communities and seriously undermining their health and traditional subsistence economies. In fact, at this time the government of Panama is proposing to build another hydroelectric project in the Gnobe-Buglé Comarca, called Tabasará 2, and is promising that it too will bring so called "economic and social development" to Indigenous Peoples.

Madame Chair, we remind the members of the Working Group, and the representatives of UN member states that Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights affirms that in no case a People may be deprived of its own means of Subsistence. Indigenous Peoples' cultural and spiritual relationships with the natural world are maintained through daily practice of subsistence hunting, fishing. We have seen the world over that these fundamental relationships, on which Indigenous Peoples food security and cultural survival are based are primary casualties of such imposed resource development programs on their lands.

During the World Trade Organization Third Ministerial Meeting in Seattle in December 1999, national, international and local Indigenous organizations and networks from around the world drafted the Indigenous Peoples' Seattle Declaration. It identified the WTO Agreement on Agriculture as responsible for promoting entry of cheap agricultural products into Indigenous communities, thereby undermining and even destroying local economies, causing ancestral lands to become increasingly concentrated in the hands of agri-corporations and landlords. Community members are forced to migrate into cities, where they become homeless and jobless.

There is an urgent need for states to establish and implement legal mechanisms at the national level, including reforms in national constitutions, to safeguard the social, cultural and economic rights of Indigenous Peoples. These include the right to food security and directly tied to land rights protections. Of equal importance is the commitment by states to fully implement international laws and standards as applied to Indigenous Peoples in this regard.

The IITC takes note with appreciation of last year's resolution of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (E/CN.4/Sub.2/200/L.37) which calls upon the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to "encourage studies with respect to the rights to food and adequate nutrition of Indigenous Peoples… stressing the linkage between their present general situation and their lands rights, and to develop further cooperation with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Progamme on indigenous issues".

The IITC also recognizes with appreciation the formal inclusion of Indigenous Peoples by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its planning process for the World Food Summit + 5 to be held in November, 2001 in Rome, as well as FAO's recent recognition of cultural as well as economic indicators as a basis for assessing food security concerns of Indigenous Peoples.

The IITC requests that this Working Group, as follow-up to the Commission on Human Rights resolution last year under "Right to Food" (E/CN.4/2000.48), include in its report to the Subcommission our recommendation that the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, as well as the new Special Rapporteur on the situation of Indigenous Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, focus their attention on the full range of cultural, social, economic, environmental, political and spiritual issues impacting the Right to Development and the interrelated Right to Food for Indigenous Peoples. Thank you, for all our relations.