State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012
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State of the minority rights World’s Minorities group and Indigenous international Peoples 2012 Events of 2011 Focus on land rights and natural resources State of theWorld’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 20121 Events of 2011 Front cover: Young Dinka men at a cattle camp Inside front cover: Indigenous miners working in near Tali village in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria the Potosí mines of Bolivia. Samer Muscati. Inside state. For decades, Dinka constituted a minority in back cover: An Adivasi woman fetches water from a the Republic of Sudan. In July 2011, South Sudan lake that was formed when villages were flooded by declared independence from the north after enduring the Machkund Dam in Odisha State, India. Stuart Africa’s longest running civil war. The country’s Freedman/Panos. future now depends on whether the government can balance the interests of its myriad ethnic groups. Sven Torfinn/Panos. 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Follow us: Tel: +44 (0)20 7422 4200 Fax: +44 (0)20 7422 4201 www.twitter.com/minorityrights Email: [email protected] Website: www.minorityrights.org www.facebook.com/minorityrights Focus on land rights and natural resources State of theWorld’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 20121 Events of 2011 Edited by Beth Walker Minority Rights Group International Introduction 6 Foreword Vital Bambanze, Chair of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Part 1 Thematic essays 10 Natural resource development and the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples Corinne Lennox 22 Strategies of resistance: testing the limits of the law Carla Clarke 36 Corporate responsibility to respect the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples Corinne Lewis 52 Indigenous women’s land rights: case studies from Africa Elisa Scalise Part 2 Regional overviews 60 Africa Rahnuma Hassan, Paige Jennings, Mohamed Matovu, Ukoha Ukiwo 88 Americas Maurice Bryan 118 Asia and Oceania Nicole Girard, Irwin Loy, Matthew Naumann, Marusca Perazzi, Jacqui Zalcberg 172 Europe Katalin Halász 192 Middle East and North Africa Doreen Khoury Part 3 Reference 211 Peoples under Threat 2012 224 Status of ratification of major international and regional instruments relevant to minority and indigenous rights 236 Who are minorities? 236 Selected abbreviations 237 Contributors 239 Acknowledgements Foreword – development with identity Vital Bambanze, Chair of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 6 Foreword State of the World’s Minorities 2009 ne of the overriding threats facing indigenous peoples’ rights to cultural life and minorities and indigenous peoples in to effective participation in decision-making O every region of the world is the risk of that will affect them or the regions where they being driven from their land and natural live. Indigenous peoples’ rights have been resources, which are vital for their livelihoods, strengthened further by the elaboration of their culture and often their identity as a people. the right to free, prior and informed consent. Many communities have been closely tied to But there is as yet no similar right expressly their territory for centuries. Yet once their land granted to minorities, who consequently remain is targeted for development – mining, oil and particularly vulnerable to exploitation. gas, dams, agribusiness, tourism or conservation The Expert Mechanism has drawn heavily – they are deftly and often violently evicted with on these standards in its efforts to ensure that little or no compensation. indigenous peoples benefit from and are involved While today’s threats to indigenous peoples and in decisions about the development of their minorities are not new, their scale and severity land and natural resources. International and have reached new proportions. Unprecedented domestic standards have moved forward over demand for the world’s remaining resources, the past years, but implementation of these combined with new technologies to extract standards remains an elusive goal. Even when previously inaccessible resources in the remotest indigenous peoples’ claims of violations of their regions, are putting even the most isolated rights have been upheld by domestic or regional minorities and indigenous peoples under tribunals, governments continue to be reluctant increasing threat from governments and private to implement these decisions. companies wanting to profit from the resources Speaking to indigenous communities and found on or under their lands. experts, I see the plight of my own community, From 2011 to 2012, I chaired the UN the Batwa of the Great Lakes region in Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Central Africa, reflected in the struggles facing Peoples, a body formed to advise the UN communities around the world. This MRG Human Rights Council on the rights of volume shows how Endorois and Ogiek in indigenous peoples. The right to traditional Kenya, hill tribes in northern Thailand, San in land and natural resources has been a focal point Botswana and many more are locked in ongoing of our work. Our current study on language disputes with governments and private companies and cultural rights has shown that cultural life to secure their rights to their ancestral lands and is inseparable from economic and social life; access to natural resources. Similarly, Bedouin in it is interdependent with other human rights the Middle East and Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang protections. Cultural life also encompasses province struggle to maintain their cultural traditional livelihoods which are commonly integrity against their respective governments’ under threat from natural resource development. desire to put national development first. Dominant national development paradigms This report provides a comprehensive and tend to override alternative conceptions of much-needed overview of marginalized groups development that may be held by minorities – both those who have been adversely affected or indigenous peoples. Natural resource by natural resource exploitation and those who development that affects these groups should be have fought to benefit from these resources – pursued in accordance with their own cultural and adds to a series of efforts to establish firm understanding of development and in a way that recommendations for reform of natural resource does not erode cultural or religious identity. development. The very existence of the Expert Mechanism I belong to the Batwa community in Burundi. is an indication of the increasing recognition Batwa are some of the original inhabitants of the that indigenous peoples and minorities are equatorial forests of the Great Lakes Region of awarded under international human rights Central Africa. Traditionally hunter-gatherers, in treaties and law. International treaties and Burundi, Batwa have never owned land. Over the UN declarations recognize minorities’ and past decades, we have seen our forests dwindle State of the World’s Minorities Foreword 7 and Indigenous Peoples 2012 and our right to live in them and use their their ancestral land in the name of forest resources denied. Violent conflicts within conservation – to make way for national the region have further undermined our parks. But historical discrimination means livelihoods and culture. Today, no longer able that Batwa communities have little political to live by hunting and gathering, most Batwa voice to negotiate and protect their