home | news l

World's indigenous people slam UK government

1 November 2004 - Survival International UK - Media release - Indigenous organisations from around the world have criticised the UK government's attempts to block the recognition of their rights. Recent negotiations to finalise a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were almost wrecked when the UK government attempted to remove all references to 'collective rights'.

At the end of November, when negotiations resume, the UK government stands poised to scupper a century of progress in human rights.

Dalee Sambo Dorough, an Alaskan Inuit who has been closely involved in the UN debates, was horrified by the UK's stance: 'Most troubling in this whole process is the UK position on collective human rights', she said. Full international recognition of collective rights is vital for the integrity of tribal communities worldwide.

Survival's Director, Stephen Corry, notes that, 'The Draft Declaration is potentially the best thing that's happened for tribal peoples for decades. Now Britain is torpedoing it before it's even been launched. These negotiations come at the end of the UN Decade for 'promoting and protecting the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide'. The UK must ensure that the Decade lives up to this promise.'

More on collective rights from Survival International:

UK Government Rejects Collective Rights forTribal Peoples

'I remember my first meeting at the UN. We were defending our collective rights. A UK
diplomat surprised me with the coldness with which he referred to indigenous peoples. He looked at me and said, 'I can't recognise the collective rights of you people. I don't see any difference in you - we are all the same.' So I spoke to him in Kaingang, the language of my people. There was no translation, and I asked him if he'd understood what I'd said and he replied, 'No'. Then I looked at him again and said, 'That's why I'm different; because only my people speak this language.' Azelene, Kaingang Indian woman, Brazil.

Reversing a century of progress in the recognition of human rights, the UK government has now decided that collective human rights do not exist. If allowed to become official policy, this threatens to harm tribal peoples around the world.Ten years ago the United Nations (UN) announced a decade of indigenous peoples and began work on a declaration of their rights that was supposed by now to have stood beside the famous Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Hundreds of consultations were carried out with indigenous representatives, and a draft was finally completed with their agreement. Now the UK and some of its former colonies (eg. Australia and Canada) are blocking the new declaration.Collective rights are vital for tribal peoples, as is confirmed not just by the draft declaration but by numerous laws and agreements which are already accepted by many countries and internationally. The most important is the convention on tribal peoples: this is the cornerstone of international law on the subject and was adopted nearly 50 years ago (ILO Convention 107 of 1957, updated to Convention 169 of 1989).

Paradoxically, the UK has accepted two exceptions to its refusal to recognise collective rights. The first is that it does accept that all peoples have the right to self-determination. It cannot avoid this because that right is enshrined in international law (in the UN's Civil & Political Rights Covenant) agreed to by virtually all countries decades ago. The second exception is that it does accept the concept of collective title to land, but declares that this is really an individual right that may be 'exercised collectively'.

This makes no sense, and indeed threatens to turn the clock back to the infamous Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up Indian reservations in the USA by transforming collective lands into individual plots which could then be sold off. In fact, there are many cases where the UK has recognised collective rights, going back centuries. The British Crown signed hundreds of treaties with North American Indians, many African peoples and the New Zealand Maori.

Although these were broken by the colonists, they nevertheless clearly acknowledged collective rights. Also, since the beginning of the 20th century successive UK governments have ratified a number of international instruments based on collective rights. One is the 1948 Genocide Convention which deals with a crime directed at a whole people, not just an individual.

The UK's position now threatens to undermine tribal peoples' rights and goes against many positive recent developments. For example, Survival has worked hard for 35 years to press mining and other companies to recognise the collective rights of tribes to decide what happens on their land, and this is now starting to happen.

Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies, has said it will not mine the lands of the Mirrar Aborigines in Australia unless the people agree. Such consent, which must be freely given and based on fair and honest information, only makes sense as a collective right, underpinned by the tribe's communal land ownership rights.

Governments have often used the denial of collective rights as a device to break up and destroy tribal peoples. If the UK government rejects these rights, others will follow suit. Survival International is pressing the government to change its mind and acknowledge that the recognition of tribal peoples' collective rights is crucial to their survival.

Take action now and make the UK government aware of the importance of collective rights to tribal peoples all over the world.

Source: Survival International

Further information: human rights issues page - includes news index and external links