Human rights

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today held an in-depth dialogue with representatives of two United Nations entities working to better integrate the concerns of indigenous peoples and enhance their participation in the Organization’s work in two vital areas: access and benefit sharing from genetic resources; and protecting the practices and innovations of indigenous and local communities.

“The violations of indigenous peoples are deep, systemic and widespread,”United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, as he briefed delegates on the second year of his mandate.

Corroborating reports that indigenous Guaraní communities in South America’s vast Chaco region -- shared by Bolivia and Paraguay -- continued to be routinely chased off their lands, pressed into debt bondage and forced to live in squalor, members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues called today on both Governments to take full responsibility for ending forced labour and expropriation of ancestral lands and territories.

The devastating impacts of logging, mining and land conversion had displaced indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, commercialized their cultures and politically repressed their leaders, speakers in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues stressed today, as they pressed the 16-member advisory body -– and their Governments -- for help in achieving equitable and “restorative” development in their countries.

The annual United Nations forum on indigenous issues opened today with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on Member States to promote development while respecting indigenous cultures and traditions, and with the Government of New Zealand taking the opportunity to announce that it would reverse its decision and support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples.

The impacts of development policies on indigenous peoples’ culture and identity will be the focus of a two-week meeting beginning Monday, 19 April, at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Effective participation and consultation of indigenous peoples is central to such policies.

The United Nations expert body monitoring worldwide implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concluded its annual three-week session at Headquarters in New York today, having taken up the compliance reports of Argentina, Mexico, New Zealand and Uzbekistan.

The Human Rights Committee today continued its read-through of its draft “general comment” on article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ‑‑ dealing with the right to freedom of opinion and expression ‑‑ approving language for two more sections in the “first reading” draft of the 54-paragraph text.

The Human Rights Committee today adopted the report, as orally amended, of its Special Rapporteur for Follow-Up on Concluding Observations, which provides a country-by-country update on correspondence with State parties on implementation of the expert body’s recommendations on their compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Continuing a read-through of its draft “general comment” on article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which deals with the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the Human Rights Committee today set language for six more paragraphs in the “first reading” draft of the 54-paragraph text.