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Indigenous peoples issues

The indigenous peoples (IPs) worldwide raise their issues internationally through lobbying. One of the institutions where IPs lobby their issues is the United Nations. The UN adopted August 9 yearly as a “Day of Indigenous Peoples.” The institutionalization of IP Day under the UN system is a concrete gain for the IPs’ struggles.

I can remember some of the important struggles IPs had in lobbying various UN agencies. In the early 1980s, the Working Group on Indigenous Population (WGIP) was created under the sub-commission on discrimination of the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The working group was committed to tackle indigenous issues and to come up with recommendations on their issues. It accepted indigenous peoples issues and allowed representatives to deliver their issues, albeit in a limited time.

The WGIP served as a gathering for IPs, where issues and struggles are shared. Here, they established networks and alliances. Sometimes it led to tactical organizations, which served as vehicle for them to raise their issues systematically. The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), a regional federation in the region, has been a consistent participant in the WGIP gatherings and has raised the national oppression experienced by the Igorots and their struggle for self-determination.

One important document resulting from the “hearing” of IP issues was the WGIP Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. The draft was submitted to the Economic and Social Council of the UN, but instead created a body composed of government representatives to review the WGIP draft as a result of their collaboration with IP representatives. Indigenous peoples expected that the final draft would come out in 2003, the time the first decade of indigenous peoples ended, but to no avail.

The gatherings at the WGIP yearly activities and the utilization by IPs on the UN declared the Decade for Indigenous Peoples (1994 to 2003). This, however, led to the proposal to create a permanent body in the highest echelon of the UN system. The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples was then created under the level of the UN ECOSOC. It has representatives from indigenous peoples from the different regions. It served as a venue for the issues of indigenous peoples and the representatives raised. The present chairperson of the Permanent Forum, Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, is a Kankanaey from Besao, Mt. Province. The gathering of indigenous peoples was institutionalized through the Forum.

Another development from these IP gatherings led to the declaration of a second Decade for Indigenous Peoples from 2005 to 2014. The decade was another opportunity for indigenous peoples to raise their issues and have their respective governments address these.

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Indigenous peoples worldwide are dependent on their lands and their resources for survival. They are farmers who till their lands for their needs. From their sustainable system, they were able to sustain the environment.

In the territories where the IPs live, states adopted another system of utilizing the land and resources, which is exploitative, in contrast to the IPs sustainable system. State-backed corporate mining interests either exploit or target it for exploitation. This exploitation is facilitated by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade being implemented by the World Trade Organizations among member countries. The same agreement facilitated the flooding of imported agricultural products on the local market. It displaced our local farmers products and disenfranchise them from their only source of livelihood – farming.

In the Cordillera, particularly in Benguet and Mountain Province, importation of agricultural products competed or led to the displacement of their produce. Thousands are dependent on farming and they now felt the effects of vegetable importation running over their products.

And I wonder why most local officials in these provinces support Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It must be recalled that Arroyo sponsored the senate resolution for the ratification of the GATT treaty when she was still a member of the senate. She in fact never adopted measures to protect the local farmers’ products. She turned her back to the farmers. Had the local officials adopted GMAs position too? #

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