Indigenous peoples needs still overshadowed by development: UN
Updated
Human rights abuses, land dispossession and persistent poverty are just a few of the grim realities faced by the world's 370-million indigenous people according to the United Nations. The UN has just released a hefty 268-page report which comes ahead of a review of the poor progress towards the Millenium Development Goals, and a UN review of the definition of development.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speakers: Vicki Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Neva Collings, Australian Indigenous lawyer
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MOTTRAM: Indigenous peoples make up just five per cent of the global population. Yet they are about a third of the world's 900-million extreme poor, rural people. And in both developed and developing countries they suffer by every measure. A native American in the United States, for example, is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population. In Nepal the life expectancy gap is 20 years, while the report names projects in specific countries, including dam building in Malaysia and oil palm plantations in Indonesia for contributing to the dispossession of indigenous peoples that's identified as a key issue contributing to their often grim lives. At the report's launch in New York, later posted on the UN's website, the chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Vicki Tauli-Corpuz, said it was important that the document was the work of indigenous authors.
TAULI-CORPUZ: This is the first time that we would say people are not writing about us. We are writing about the current situation that we are living in different parts of the world.
MOTTRAM: Land rights issues, threats to cultural diversity, inferior education and dire health conditions are highlighted and issues of the environment.
COLLINGS: I think that there this perhaps a divorcing of this word environment from humans, or peoples, that have in fact shaped those environments.
MOTTRAM: Neva Collings is an Australian indigenous lawyer who wrote the extensive chapter for the UN report on environment issues. She says the linkages between environment protection and indigenous stewardship are recognised internationally but don't always translate on the ground.
COLLINGS: For example Kakadu World Heritage listing was inscribed for its natural values and its cultural values. But there may be other attempts to list for world heritage on natural values along and that can cause conflict in regions. I think it's really important to work in partnership with indigenous peoples in any attempts to list for natural values and ensure that cultural values are included.
MOTTRAM: What about in the Asian region, what sort of outcomes are we seeing there?
COLLINGS: Well I mean, in Asia you've got deforestation problems and indigenous peoples being forcible removed from their lands due to deforestation. The REDD, Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation, can affect customary use of lands because they may have customary use that will conflict with that REDD listing so they can't use it for certain purposes for example because those lands are just simply locked up.
MOTTRAM: And she says Asia's drive for development is tending to further overshadow indigenous issues. In Australia, Neva Collings says, there is an immediate challenge, too, in the government's still-pending legislation on climate change.
COLLINGS: The extent to which indigenous people will get credits for managing their forests under the emissions trading scheme remains to be seen. It's unlikely that it will be included, because there's no reduced emissions from degradation and deforestation in developed countries.
MOTTRAM: Other environmental challenges include the tension between government claims to resource rights, as recognised in some international conventions, and rights to self-determination and economic development that are also enshrined for indigenous people. Neva Collings echoes the general principle the report points to for trying to make progress on indigenous issues - that full engagement is needed to protect rights and avoid conflict. The UN's Vicki Tauli-Corpuz says the timing of the report is critical.
TAULI-CORPUZ: When for example UNDP will be working on their human development report in which the concept of development will be analysed. And we consider as indigenous peoples that we are offering an important tool with this report that should be considered in discussions on new views of indigenous people's development and the big gaps that we are still facing in the world.
