* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
About six percent (370 million people) of the world’s population is Indigenous. Indigenous peoples span 90 countries, speaking thousands of different languages, with diverse knowledge and practices. Indigenous territories constitute over 20% of the world’s landmass – and those territories host a staggering 80% of our planet’s biodiversity.
Yet indigenous people in all regions of the world continue to suffer discrimination and injustice. They have their lands stripped from them – along with their livelihoods, and their cultures, languages, health, and wellbeing are under threat. Indigenous people have not been silent victims to these injustices: “Through legal battles, public awareness campaigns, partnerships with governments, corporations and other organizations”, Indigenous-led activism has led to progress like the 2007 UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which was two decades in the making. It reflects both the perseverance of indigenous people participating in the drafting of the Declaration, but also the reluctance and resistance by Member States to recognize Indigenous rights and provide redress for past rights abuses such as land dispossession and even genocide (a term which has been used to describe the case of over 100,000 forcibly removed children in Australia known as the ‘Stolen Generation’).
As the slow march towards Indigenous rights continues, some hopeful steps were taken recently at the first ever World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) - a high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly, with an objective of sharing perspectives and best practices on the realization of the rights of indigenous peoples, including pursuing the objectives of the UNDRIP.
The WCIP held in New York on 22-23 September, 2014, gathered together “over 1000 indigenous delegates, Heads of State and Government, UN officials and national human rights institutions”. After months of negotiations, the WCIP's Outcome Document was approved by consensus at the meeting, committing the UN and member states to take a number of actions to put into effect and encourage compliance with the UNDRIP, adopted in 2007, and the Alta Document that sets out the priorities for indigenous peoples.
WCIP Outcome the result of a four-year process
The outcome document upholds the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for establishing country-level commitments, and defines some priorities, including youth, children, land rights, measures to be taken with regard to corporations, extractive industries, violence against women and girls and persons with disabilities.
President of the Center for the Autonomy and Development of Indigenous Peoples, Mirna Cunningham, described the process as yet another fight - a four-year process involving a considerable amount of pressure from indigenous people, from the moment the UNGA decided to convene the WCIP in 2010: "It was only in May 2014… that the President of the Assembly [involved] two representatives from the indigenous peoples... Some States, like the African bloc, were still opposed to this as late as the first Interactive Hearing, saying that the indigenous peoples involvement was breaking the "sanctity" of the intergovernmental process. However, in spite of that, negotiations on the outcome document started in July."
Importantly, however, the outcome document is a product of a participative process that, as Cunningham shared with AWID when interviewed last June, sets a significant precedent in terms of indigenous peoples participation in a space previously confined to intergovernmental negotiations: “We achieved it negotiating on an almost equal basis and were able to set a precedent at the UN in terms of direct negotiations between indigenous peoples and governments."
Indigenous women’s rights & post-2015 Development Agenda
The Outcome Document includes five paragraphs addressing women's rights issues such as: violence and discrimination in general; a request to have women's empowerment as a key issue in the next agenda of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; and measures to be adopted at the national level to politically empower indigenous women and facilitate their participation in public life. Cunningham said that in general, indigenous women consider the achievements made as important, that there was a lot of State support for addressing the issue of violence against indigenous women and girls, and that one paragraph on gender and ethnic disaggregation will help to monitor political measures adopted in relation to indigenous peoples as well as women. Sexual and reproductive rights (SRR) faced more of a struggle, however, with “a group of countries that included the Holy See put[ting) a lot of pressure for the issue of SRR to be removed altogether.” In the end, consensus was also reached on the SRR paragraph.
Cunningham told AWID that there was disappointment amongst indigenous people regarding the work of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2015 Agenda. While their initial proposal was to have a total of six references to indigenous peoples in the agenda, only two have been included: one on education and the other on agricultural productivity and access to land.
Paragraph 37 states: “We note that indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In this regard, we commit ourselves to giving due consideration to all the rights of indigenous peoples in the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda.” Cunningham sees this as calling for indigenous people’s rights to be included as a cross-cutting issue in the Post-2015 Agenda, and gives hope that, with intergovernmental negotiations starting soon, the outcome document will be used as a tool for further negotiations.
A foundation to build upon
At the WCIP, Member States reiterated their support for the objectives of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In terms of next steps, Cunningham highlights three central processes which are defined in the Outcome Document that indigenous people will be strongly engaging with and advocating for:
- The first recognizes and ensures the participation of Indigenous Peoples' institutions in the UN system.
- The second is a commitment to develop tools to monitor how States are implementing the Declaration and incorporate the issue of the Declaration in their review processes, including in the Universal Periodic Review. The Secretary General has given two years to produce a report on how the commitments adopted in the outcome document are being met
- Finally, it requests the appointment of higher ranked officers to follow-up all indigenous issues within the UN system
In terms of the progress report, Cunningham admits this will require “strong advocacy, a lot of pressure on our part, but it is a challenge we definitely must face. We feel this is an opportunity we must seize."
The Declaration also mandates the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and her counterpart on Indigenous Peoples to jointly work on a report on violence against indigenous women. In addition, there is a tool that mandates the UN to implement a "System-wide Action Plan" ensuring a coherent approach to achieve the Declaration's goals. Cunningham points out that the UN Inter-Agencies Group for Latin America has already begun to meet, and the same is happening in each of the regions, to work on this action plan from within the system and the Inter-Agencies Group themselves.
The fact that there was a need for the WCIP to reiterate a Declaration from 2007, reveals how frustratingly slow progress has been on achieving Indigenous rights worldwide. On the positive side, however, the participatory process used to develop the Outcome Document and commitments to continue such consultations, as well as the outlining of processes to monitor States parties implementation of the declaration, can be seen as positive steps forward – particularly if WCIP outcomes can be used as a negotiating tool for Indigenous rights within the post-2015 development agenda.
Asked if she was satisfied with the outcome document, Cunningham stated,
"After four years we can conclude that progress has been made. The challenges are huge. We did not achieve everything we wanted but we did get a document that some have defined as 'digestible' and that did not set us back in our rights”.
To push for real progress on Indigenous rights as set out in the Declaration, Cunningham says they will be depending on some key strategies: "relying on the group of friendly countries to monitor these developments; relying on the indigenous movement, organized indigenous women and our alliances with organizations like AWID and others from civil society in general, to show that inequality is not only an indigenous peoples' issue but it affects everybody."
Research assistance by By Gabby De Cicco and Susan Tolmay
