18 May 2007
Press Release
Department of Public Information
News and Media Division
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL
HR/4921
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Sixth Session
8th & 9th Meetings (AM & PM)
NDIGENOUS FACE POVERTY -- EVEN EXTINCTION -- AT HANDS
OF INDIFFERENT GOVERNMENTS, PROFIT-HUNGRY CORPORATIONS,
UNITED NATIONS FORUM TOLD
Indigenous Hears from Special Rapporteurs on Indigenous
Human Rights, Violence against Women, Trafficking of Women and Children
Increasingly cut off from lands, resources and traditions vital to their
well-being and survival, tribal and native peoples in all regions of the world
now faced marginalization, poverty, disease, violence –- and, in some instances,
extinction as a people –- at the hands of indifferent Governments and
profit-hungry corporations, the top United Nations expert on indigenous rights
warned today.
“One of the new trends that has been reinforced in recent years is […]the
continuous loss of indigenous lands and territories, including their loss of
control over natural resources […]intensified as a result of economic
globalization, especially with increased exploitation of [energy and water]
resources,” said Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur of the Geneva-based
Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms
of indigenous peoples, in his annual address to the Permanent Forum on
Indigenous issues.
Mr. Stavenhagen, who was joined by the Special Rapporteur on violence against
women, highlighted trends that that had a tremendous impact on indigenous
peoples, including the encroachment of extractive and logging industries, such
as those in North America and Liberia; the extension of plantation economies,
particularly in some regions of South-East Asia and the Amazon; and the ongoing
destruction of the last original forests due to indiscriminate logging, in
various countries in Equatorial Africa and Latin America. “They lead to massive
violations of their human rights,” he said, adding that he had personally
visited some of the areas and had been able to verify the devastation first
hand, in some cases.
Citing other examples, he noted the loss of territory by Cambodia’s indigenous
communities as a result of widespread corruption and economic concessions over
ancestral lands granted against the provisions of the land law. Throughout
South-East Asia, native peoples were vulnerable, facing military build-ups on
their territories and the loss of lands as a result of commercial plantation
growth and the construction of “mega-projects” that had substantial
environmental and social impacts. Similar situations could be found in Africa,
where some countries -- including Cameroon, Congo, Uganda and the United
Republic of Tanzania -- routinely dispossessed vulnerable groups of their
ancestral lands, even though there were laws on the books that were supposed to
protect them from just such abuse.
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