Grant lasting protection for the rights of 400 million people!

The UN Human Rights Council must without fail retain the organs and representatives which were created by the United Nations for the indigenous peoples. This is the demand of the Society for Threatened Peoples International (GfbV) for the approximately 400 million indigenous people (the official term for the original inhabitants) in the world. "It must be a matter of course that the indigenous peoples can represent themselves in their own affairs at the world organisation and stand up for their rights themselves”, said the GfbV correspondent for indigenous peoples, Yvonne Bangert, on Thursday in Göttingen. It must be just as much a matter of course that a special correspondent or non-government organisation is there to give them legal support. For it is precisely the original inhabitants who are often in a minority in the various countries and whose rights are ignored by government, commercial enterprises or the majority of the population. This varies from discrimination and disadvantaging, forcible expulsion which is tolerated or even instigated by government to bloody suppression or annihilation.”

At the United Nations the structures are falling away, which during the past 25 years have been growing to represent the approximately 5,000 indigenous peoples throughout the world.

The UN Human Rights Council is debating at its 5th meeting in Geneva, which comes to an end on Monday, the reformation of the existing mandates of the human rights commission, which it superseded a year ago. To its brief belong the tasks of the special correspondents and of bodies like the Working Group for Indigenous Populations WGIP.

"It is precisely the WGIP which has played an outstanding part in the establishment of the rights of indigenous peoples” recalls the GfbV International together with four European NGOs. "So it was the indigenous peoples, NGOs and human rights experts in the framework of the WGIP who worked out the declaration of the rights of indigenous people, which was passed almost unanimously by the Human Rights Council in its first meeting in June 2006. We call then earnestly on the Human Rights Council to keep to this path and to establish a mechanism which will successfully continue the achievements of the Working Group.” Also essential for the securing of the rights of the original inhabitants is the continuation of the mandate of the special correspondent for indigenous peoples.

On Tuesday the GfbV and the Working Party of North American Indians (Vienna), the Action Group for Indians and Human Rights (Munich), INCOMINDIOS (Switzerland) and Human Rights 3000 (Freiburg) sent a letter in this sense to the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council.