UNDRIP Report - English FINAL - International Forum on Globalization

ights. He felt that BINGOs were complicit with
governments in violating indigenous rights and that
they should be held responsible for their role. “They
have a relationship with the government where they
could say ‘Hey, you are violating Article 32 of the
UN Declaration, so we refuse to work with you on
this project unless you reverse your decision,’ ” said
Chief Kokoi. He hoped the UN Declaration could
help hold BINGOs responsible at the national level.
Roman Czebiniak of Greenpeace <strong>International</strong>
commented on the issue of enforcement, saying that
it is always a “tricky issue in international
conversations.” He suggested that the group come
up with some way to keep up to date and informed
on the issue. “We can cover the Climate Convention,
and the World Bank, and the key focal points where
policy discussion is going to be happening, where
money is going to be flowing, how investments are
occurring in developing countries,” said Czebiniak.
He urged others to identify the crucial elements of
<strong>UNDRIP</strong> that must be integrated into our work,
stressing that there must be strength in some key
provisions or soft language within climate
negotiations or government bills that says something
to the effect of needing to enforce <strong>UNDRIP</strong>. He urged
the group to identify language that would be
important to include in legislation and bank funding.
REP O RTS F RO M TH E FIEL D: L O C AL, GL O B AL AND R EGI O NA L P ER SP EC TIV ES
Joseph Ole Simel (Maasai) of the Mainyoito
Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization in
Kenya said that it is up to indigenous peoples
themselves to understand the Declaration if it is to
make progress, and that the challenge of informing
people about the Declaration needs to be addressed
through education. Ole Simel sees “the
implementation at a local level where people
demand the government to respect their rights, and
at a national level where the Kenyan government is
now working on the constitution. Indigenous
peoples are working together to see how that
constitution can cull certain principles from the
Declaration.” Another question Ole Simel raised
was, “How is the UN Human Rights Council going
to ask the government to implement the
Declaration?” He explained the need for mobilizing
resources so activists can plan at local, national and
international levels.
Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch said that
indigenous peoples’ territories contain between
seventy to eighty percent of all of the biodiversity of
the planet, and nearly a fifth of global greenhouse
gas emissions come from tropical deforestation.
Soltani explained how forests regulate climate
stability by acting as heat pumps and water pumps
for the planet. <strong>UNDRIP</strong> could be used to fight for
land and resource rights, she argued. But Soltani said
that first there is a need for more popular educational
tools, and workshops. “They need case studies, more
video and radio programs as educational models—
because that really is the fundamental step to
movement forward,” she argued. Still, she said,
forward progress was visible in Ecuador’s new
constitution, which enshrined the rights of nature,
indigenous rights to territories, and the rights of
indigenous peoples to have their own administrative
institutions. Soltani said, “The campaign in Peru is a
little more challenging since the Peruvian
government “has been on a rampage, giving out over
seventy percent of the Peruvian Amazon to
extractive industries just in the last three years.”
Important cases to watch are those involving
territory with uncontacted peoples. Despite legal
claims brought to the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights of the Organization of American
States, she said more legal strategies are needed at
both the national and the international level.
Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental
Network spoke of the hesitation that American
Indian and Alaskan native tribes have when taking
<strong>UNDRIP</strong> into Congress or into the courts. “There is
an urgency to develop proper educational materials,
not only to inform our tribal leadership but our
grassroots. It has been our tribal grassroots that have
elevated the issues of environmental justice,” he said.
Goldtooth said there seems to be interest among
groups in the United States to use <strong>UNDRIP</strong>. An
example is the Healing River Tribe in Arizona, which
has adopted the Declaration, and the tribal
government is beginning to implement it. He said,
“People do not need approval from the powers of the
US government.” Goldtooth said that Roberta
Blackgoat of the Navajo went to Geneva to argue that
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