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Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues takes center stage at United Nations

9 May 2003 - NEW YORK - On May 12, indigenous nations and supporters will gather at United Nations headquarters in New York for the second session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. With several hundred million indigenous people in the world, the forum was created to address issues indigenous peoples around the world are facing.

Throughout history, the rights of indigenous nations have been violated as people have worked to maintain their identities and traditions in societies with different economic and political characteristics then their own. Today, the international community and UN recognize the special attention needed to protect the indigenous peoples of the world.

Established in July 2000, by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations at the recommendation of the Commission on Human Rights, designated members of the forum represent nations world-wide with an interest in indigenous issues.

Members of the Permanent Forum have named “Indigenous Children and Youth” as the theme for this year’s gathering. According to the Permanent Forum, “it is the physical and mental health of indigenous children who will ensure the survival, growth and prosperity of the people from whom they come.”

Focusing on ways to ensure that children are educated in their indigenous languages, cultures and values, members of the forum hope to ensure that existing cultures thrive and traditions are not lost.

Source: Indian Country Today

PERMANENT FORUM ON INDIGENOUS ISSUES

CHAIRMAN GEOFF CLARK
Aboriginal AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION

22 May 2003 - Thank you Chairman,

Human rights for the Indigenous peoples of Australia have been non-existent or rare for a great majority of the 215 years since our land was colonised by non-Indigenous settlers.

To this day we are not even mentioned in the nation's Constitution drawn up more than 100 years ago and it was not until 1967 that we were granted citizenship rights in our own country.

There has been dispossession of our lands and seas since settlement, well-documented incidents of genocide of our peoples, and generations of families torn apart by official policies of separating children from their parents.

Still there are Australians who publicly and loudly deny these facts. In parts of Australia we have among the highest rates of imprisonment in the world.

We are treated as strangers in our own land.

In recent years we have attempted to codify Indigenous rights in a Treaty but our Federal Government will not even come to the negotiating table. During this period we have seen the same government encroach even further on our rights.

As I have informed this conference the government has ignored the findings of the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination that its amendments to the Native Title Act were discriminatory and should be renegotiated.

More recently the human rights of the Indigenous peoples of Australia have been further eroded with government proposals to axe the position of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner as part of a revamp of our Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

In 1999 the UN CERD said of a similar proposal that Australia should take into account whether a generalist position "would have sufficient opportunity to address in an adequate manner the full range of issues regarding Indigenous peoples that warrant attention".

"Consideration should be given to the additional benefits of an appropriately qualified specialist position to address these matters, given the continuing political, economic and social marginalisation of the Indigenous community of Australia," CERD said.

Our government has been attempting to move against the Social Justice Commissioner's position since it was first elected during 1996.

Similarly the government has been hostile towards the organisation of which I am Chairman, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The government's very first press conference seven years ago was to announce a special audit into ATSIC.

As the Forum has been made aware, the government moved before Easter to strip the elected Commissioners of the ATSIC board of their powers to make funding decisions which directly affect Indigenous peoples.

Nearly all of ATSIC's staff will be transferred to a new government agency, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services, from July 1. This new agency will determine all future funding decisions in place of the ATSIC Board of Commissioners.

These attacks on Indigenous rights are a sad reflection on the state of race relations in contemporary Australia.

Source:ATSIC News

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