Appeal to the members of parliament: Give the native peoples of the world a future!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) appealed on Thursday in an urgent letter to all members of Parliament to demand the ratification of the Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation ILO and thus to secure effectively the basic rights of about 350 to 400 million native people. "Set a mark for the future of these communities, which are being driven on all continents to the point of extinction and who have to right for their survival”, says the appeal of the human rights organisation. On Friday the German Parliament debates a motion to this effect of the Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen). It is for this reason that the UN Special Correspondent for the Rights of Native Peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, has come to Berlin. He is fighting passionately for the ratification of the ILO Convention 169. It came into force in September 1991 and has been ratified by 18 states so far, among them the four European states of the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Spain.

"There are about 5000 indigenous peoples in the world. They have constantly to struggle against expulsion, persecution, genocide and the destruction of their means of life. The climate change hits them very hard as well. It has become for many native people a threat to their existence,” wrote the GfbV in its appeal. "The Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation of the United Nations is the only international legal instrument to provide comprehensive protection for the rights of indigenous peoples and could prove a turning-point if it were supported by influential countries like Germany.”

Germany has no indigenous peoples of its own, but Germany has an immediate influence on their conditions of life. On the land of indigenous peoples German banks and companies finance projects involving dams and pipelines, which lead to land-grabbing and pollution of the environment. Imports of mineral oil and natural gas are often carried out at the expense of the small peoples of Siberia. Hermes guarantees (guarantees given by the government to encourage exporters) are issued for investments abroad which have deleterious environmental and social consequences. The German government too must finally take responsibility and live up to its maxim of giving especial weight in its policies to the preservation of human rights.

We shall be happy to send our new brochure on the ILO Convention 169 as a pdf file. Please contact Yvonne Bangert of the GfbV Department for Indigenous Peoples at indigene@gfbv.de