the indigenous world 2017 - · pdf filethe indigenous world 2017 this yearbook gives a...

UN

DRIP - 10 YEARS

IWGIA

THE INDIGENOUS WORLD 2017

This yearbook gives a comprehensive update on the current situa-tion of indigenous peoples and their human rights situation across the world and offers an overview of the most significant develop-ments in international and regional processes relating to indige-nous peoples during 2016.

The Indigenous World 2017 contains 71 articles and country re-ports all written by indigenous and non-indigenous activists as well as scholars and experts on indigenous peoples’ rights. The book is an essential source of information and an indispensable tool for those interested in indigenous issues and who wish to be informed about the most recent issues and developments which impact in-digenous peoples worldwide.

As the world approaches the 10th anniversary of the UNDRIP, the main international legal framework for the protection and promotion of indigenous peoples’ rights, particular attention is paid to the status of its implementation and this year’s edition includes three regional chapters on the UNDRIP’s significance, implementation, and impact in Asia, Africa and Latin America over the past ten years.

INTERNATIONAL WORK GROUP FOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS


3

Copenhagen



Compilation and editing: Katrine Broch Hansen, Käthe Jepsen and Pamela Leiva JacquelinRegional editors: Arctic & North America: Kathrin Wessendorf Mexico, Central and South America: Alejandro Parellada and Pamela Leiva Jacquelin Australia and the Pacific: Diana Vinding Asia: Signe Leth The Middle East: Diana Vinding Africa: Marianne Wiben Jensen International Processes: Lola García-Alix and Kathrin Wessendorf

Cover and typesetting: Jorge MonrásMaps: Jorge MonrásIlustration for the logo on the cover: Gerardo Petsaín SharupEnglish translation: Elaine Bolton, Rebecca Knight and Diana VindingProof reading: Elaine Bolton Prepress and Print: Eks-Skolens Trykkeri, Copenhagen, Denmark

© The authors and The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), 2017 All Rights Reserved

The reproduction and distribution of information contained in The Indigenous World is welcome as long as the source is cited. However, the translation of articles into other languages and the reproduction of the whole BOOK is not allowed without the consent of IWGIA. The articles in The Indigenous World are produced on a voluntary basis. It is IWGIA’s intention that The Indigenous World should provide a comprehensive update on the situ-ation of indigenous peoples worldwide but, unfortunately, it is not always possible to find authors to cover all relevant countries. The articles reflect the authors’ own views and opinions and not necessarily those of IWGIA itself. IWGIA can furthermore not be held responsible for the accuracy of their content. The Indigenous World is published annually in English and Spanish.

Interim Directors: Lola García-Alix and Kathrin WessendorfHead of finance: Søren Juul Aarslev

INTERNATIONAL WORK GROUP FOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRSClassensgade 11 E, DK 2100 – Copenhagen, DenmarkTel: (45) 35 27 05 00 – E-mail: [email protected] – Web: www.iwgia.org

Distribution in North America:Transaction Publishers 300 McGaw DriveRaritan Center - Edison, NJ 08857www.transactionpub.com

HURRIDOCS CIP DATA

Title: The Indigenous World 2017Edited by: Katrine Broch Hansen, Käthe Jepsen and Pamela Leiva JacquelinPages: 569ISSN: 1024-0217ISBN: 978-87-92786-72-2Language: EnglishIndex: 1. Indigenous Peoples – 2. Yearbook – 3. International ProcessesBISAC codes: LAW110000 Indigenous PeoplesREF027000 Yearbooks & AnnualsPOL035010 Political Freedom & Security / Human RightsGeografical area: WorldPublication date: April 2017

This book has been produced with financial support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA)

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RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Of the more than 180 peoples inhabiting the territory of contemporary Russia, 40 are officially recognised as “indigenous small-numbered peo-ples of the North, Siberia and the Far East”. These are groups of less than 50,000 members, perpetuating some aspects of their traditional ways of life and inhabiting the Northern and Asian parts of the country. One more group is actively pursuing recognition, which it continues to be denied. Together, they number about 260,000 individuals, less than 0.2 per cent of Russia’s population. Ethnic Russians account for 78 per cent. Other peoples, such as the five million Tatars, are not officially considered indig-enous peoples, and their self-identification varies.

The latest official population figures from the 2010 national census do not provide disaggregated data on the socio-economic status of indige-nous peoples. Indigenous peoples are predominantly rural dwellers while Russia is, on the whole, a highly urbanised country.

Indigenous peoples are not recognised by Russian legislation as such; however, the constitution and national legislation set out the rights of “indigenous minority peoples of the North”, including rights to consulta-tion and participation in specific cases. There is, however, no such con-cept as “Free, Prior and Informed Consent” enshrined in legislation. Rus-sia has not ratified ILO Convention 169 and has not endorsed the UN-DRIP. The country has inherited its membership of the major UN Cove-nants and Conventions from the Soviet Union: the ICCPR, ICESCR, ICERD, ICEDAW and ICRC. It also has ratified the Framework Conven-tion for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) of the Council of Europe.

There is a multitude of regional, local and interregional indigenous organisations. RAIPON, the national umbrella organisation, operates un-der tight state control.

76 IWGIA – THE INDIGENOUS WORLD – 2017

Land and natural resource rights

2016 saw a series of cases triggered by a legal change in the federal Land Codex that entered into force on 1 March 20151 (see The Indigenous World 2015). This cancelled an article that had stipulated that, in places of traditional residence and traditional activities of indigenous peoples, local authorities should decide on the “prior determination of locations for the placing of objects” (i.e.: industrial facilities, oil rigs, pipelines etc.) on the basis of the results of meetings or referenda of the indigenous and local communities.2 This means that local authorities have now lost most of their legal leverage in terms of being able to protect indigenous lands from incursions by business enterprises and other resource users. In 2015 and 2016, this led to a number of cases of violations of indigenous peoples’ land tenure.

Reduction of indigenous peoples’ territories in the Far East

The law on Territories of Traditional Nature Use (TTNU) was passed in 2001. It is the only federal law affording some form of recognition of indigenous peoples’ land tenure. However, the federal government has never confirmed any of the several hundred Territories of Traditional Nature Use (TTNU) created by regional and local administrations, in cooperation with indigenous communities, despite repeated calls from UN treaty bodies, indigenous organisations and human rights experts to do so. The regionally- and locally-established TTNU therefore have no guaranteed legal status and can be dismantled at any time. This is precisely what happened in the Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk in 2016.

On 30 September 2016, without prior notification to the authorised repre-sentatives and organisations of indigenous peoples, the acting Governor of Khabarovsk territory issued an order changing the boundaries of the 13 TTNU that had previously been created by the regional or local authorities. This has shrunk the TTNU area to less than half its prior size. The Khabarovsk Krai gov-ernment said the decision was necessary because it had to allocate land for dis-tribution under the so-called “Far Eastern Hectare” programme, a programme of the Russian government aimed at providing the free distribution of one hectare of land to each Russian citizen wishing to move to the Far East (see The Indigenous

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World 2016, page 44). In response, the indigenous peoples of Khabarovsk Krai threatened a mass hunger strike.3

Controversy regarding Numto National Park

Lake Numto (“Heavenly Lake”) in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area is one of the most sacred places for the indigenous Khanty people.4 On 28 October 2016, the government of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area approved changes to the bound-aries of Numto National Park in order to accommodate the wishes of the regional oil company “Surgutneftegaz” to drill for oil in the area. The areas taken out of the national park are particularly precious in terms of biodiversity, indigenous cultural heritage and livelihood. The area surrounding Lake Numto is an ancient place of worship for three indigenous peoples, the Khanty, Nenets and Mansi, as the place of the earthly incarnation of Num, the god of the heavens and creator of the earth and people.5 Back in February 2016, members of the Aborigen Forum, a network of indigenous organisations and activists, wrote in an appeal to the governor: “Nothing can compensate for the loss of the pristine nature and the sacred atmos-phere of the entire landscape around Lake Numto.”6 Unfortunately, this appeal did not stop the decision to expand oil exploration in the pristine environment.

Oil and gas / Yamal and Taimyr

The Yamal Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) project (see The Indigenous World 2016) neared its completion in 2016, amidst serious doubts as to whether and under what conditions Nenets reindeer herders had actually consented to the project. The project will take away much of the dry elevated pastureland on Yamal’s Northwest coast and threatens to severely reduce fish stocks. Yamal LNG is a joint project of Russia’s second-largest gas producer, Novatek, France’s Total and a number of Chinese companies. The German export credit agency Hermes ini-tially received an application for financial investment from a company involved in the project but this was withdrawn in 2016.

Like other Arctic regions with subsoil resources extraction, Yamal is a no-go area for civil society observers because it is classified as a border zone. This means that foreigners are barred from entering without a special permit from the

79THE ARCTIC

intelligence service, and even Russian civil society representatives have been turned away when trying to access the region. Those observers who do make it to the peninsula find themselves under tight scrutiny when trying to interview lo-cals and have great difficulty in reaching the affected reindeer herders because the latter are usually at a great distance from the settlements. Locals are also typically too intimidated to speak out.

In the summer, Yamal was shattered by an unprecedented outbreak of the anthrax virus, which claimed the lives of 1,200 deer and one boy. The outbreak was blamed on the unusual and lasting heat in the Arctic that year, which allowed the virus to escape from burial grounds and spread.7 As climate change-induced warming is stronger in the Arctic than in any other region, the heatwave was widely seen as an impact of this. The Government of Yamal, however, responded to events by blaming the outbreak on reindeer overpopulation and announced its intention to kill over a third of Yamal’s reindeer, without having consulted the af-fected reindeer herders. The slaughter was to take place within just one month.

At the same time, the environment ministry began handing out exploration and extraction licenses for gas deposits in the region. Minister Sergey Donskoy said at a meeting of the President with the government: “The Resource potential of the Arctic regarding natural gas (up to 20 billion cubic meters of proven re-serves) with a unique degree of concentration requires special measures to en-courage their fast development. Otherwise, Russia may not be able to use this potential according to its own interests.” Accordingly, between June and Septem-ber, Novatek received licenses for deposits in the region, including in the Syador-sky area of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, and the Zapadno-Solpatinski, Severo-Tanamski and Nyavuyakhski areas on Gydan Peninsula.

“The coincidence of the announcement of plans to urgently reduce the rein-deer population in Yamal by over one third with the rapid issuing of licenses for gas extraction in the same region is cause for the greatest concern over the fate of the reindeer herders who continue their traditional family-based nomadic way of life and have managed to defend this way of life throughout the Soviet era and up until today”, said Olga Murashko, a Russian anthropologist working with indig-enous peoples. “This means that a huge number of nomads on Yamal and Gydan peninsulas will lose their means of subsistence and the possibility to maintain their traditional way of life. Additionally, it is clear that within the short time frame given, the indigenous reindeer herders cannot be properly consulted on the ad-ministration’s plans to annihilate a large number of reindeer”.8 By the end of the


year, the administration announced that 100,000 reindeer had been killed, which is above the annual average but far from their target figure. What prevented the slaughter from affecting a much larger number was simply insufficient capacity.

Another region with a similar level of inaccessibility is Taimyr, to the east of Yamal. The largest settlement in the region is the mining city of Norilsk, which is the planet’s northernmost large city and one of the most polluted places on earth. In September, Greenpeace reported on its attempts to inspect oil drilling sites on Taimyr and how it was eventually denied access and turned back.9 At the same time, Russian oil and gas companies are working in close cooperation with West-ern companies in most of these regions.

Fish administration prohibits use of traditional fishing gear

On 19 April 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture published Order 152, which prohibits indigenous peoples from catching fish using net gear, with the exception of Pa-cific and Arctic salmon, between 1 May and 30 September each year. Net gear means literally everything, including the traditional fishing gear used by indige-nous peoples such as fish traps. At the same time, fish nets remain permitted for commercial fishing enterprises.

The indigenous people of Kovran, the main village of the Itelmen people on Kamchatka, signed a joint appeal to the Governor of Kamchatka and the Federal Government. On Monday 30 May, a village gathering was held in the Culture House to protest at the actions of the Federal Fishery Agency, which allegedly benefit the commercial fishing enterprises that are lobbying them. Participants insisted that the local population had been using nets since before even the ar-rival of the Russians on the peninsula.

On 7 June, the Federation Council urgently convened a meeting of the Work-ing Group on Improving the Legislation of the Russian Federation on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Russian Far East during which representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture said that the changes to the rules might be reviewed in the autumn. This would, however, have been too late to resolve the acute food crisis. By the end of the year, the order had not been revised, although no legal action had been taken against indigenous people in Kovran who had defied it. If the order is actively enforced, most indigenous peo-ples will lose their access to food.10

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Bikin National Park

The 1,160,000-hectare Bikin National Park came into effect in 2016. The park had been officially created on 3 November 2015. It is located in the basin of the Bikin River, which has been nicknamed the “Russian Amazon”, and was created to protect the Siberian tiger population. Its territory is traditionally inhabited and used by the indigenous Udege, a people with a population of 1,500 that has been strug-gling for recognition of their land rights to this territory since the late 1980s. When the creation of the National Park was originally announced the response was rather mixed because indigenous peoples’ experience of national parks in Russia is overwhelmingly negative. Indigenous peoples are usually excluded from their management, denied access to their territories, denied the right to maintain their traditional subsistence activities or to engage in ethno-tourism, one of the few potential sources of revenue. The announcement of Bikin Park had therefore given rise to significant anxieties. In negotiations, the regional government pledged to ensure that the federal legislation on protected areas would be amended in order to enshrine indigenous land and participation rights in the park’s statutes. An amendment to the federal law was not passed in 2016; how-ever, the adopted statutes of the park guarantee that 68% of the park’s area will be available for traditional use and that the area may not be reduced. In a major breakthrough, in September, the government appointed Alexey Kudryavtsev, a local person proposed by the Udege, as the park’s director who then went on to form the “Permanent indigenous peoples’ council under the national park’s ad-ministration”, the chair of which will automatically serve as the park’s vice director. By the end of 2016, observers were therefore more optimistic with regard to Bikin, although concerns remain regarding several other planned national parks, such as on Kamchatka’s Commander Islands, Vaigach island in the Barents Sea, the Shor National Park in Kemerovo region11 and the Udegeyskaya Legenda national park12 in Primorye.

Criminalisation and stigmatisation as “foreign agents”

In December 2015, Sergey Nikiforov, leader of the Ivanovskoye Evenk commu-nity in Amur region who had spearheaded their resistance against Petropavlovsk,


a UK-based gold mining company that extracts gold on the Evenk territory, was sentenced to four years’ incarceration in a penal colony (see The Indigenous World 2016). Several attempts were made during 2016 to put pressure on the authorities to release him, including advocacy by the UK-based Business and Human Rights Centre with the company and its shareholders and through the European Court of Human Rights. This latter, however, refused to accept his case, as his lawyer reported in November. Amnesty International and the Memo-rial Centre have both identified Mr. Nikiforov as a prisoner of conscience.

The case of Sergey Kechimov, a Khanty reindeer herder and shaman charged with attempted murder even though, according to his own testimony, he was merely fighting off stray dogs brought in by the oil company (see The Indigenous World 2016) had not been finally adjudicated on by the end of 2016.

Another indigenous organisation, the Batani Foundation, was declared a “for-eign agent” in March 2016 such that, three years after the adoption of the law on foreign agents (see The Indigenous World 2013), most independent indigenous organisations are now listed as foreign agents, together with 150 other civil soci-ety organisations. Organisations typically deem it too risky to continue once they have been listed, and so the law has led to the disappearance of many independ-ent NGOs that had often been around since the early 1990s.

On Sunday 11 December, internationally-renowned indigenous rights activist Rodion Sulyandziga was detained and questioned for several hours by the Mos-cow Konkovo police department. He was about to chair an educational seminar when police officers came to his flat at 7:00 a.m., searched his apartment and seized his personal laptop. No charges were brought against Mr. Sulyandziga, and so observers concluded that this had to be an act of deliberate intimidation.

International human rights mechanisms

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) continued to consider the case of the Kazas village in Kemerovo region, South Siberia, in 2016, a case that had commenced with a submission to the Urgent Action mech-anism in spring 2015. No decision was taken by the committee during 2016.13 However, in July, CERD received the 23-24 periodic report of the Russian govern-ment, which contains several pages of information on the Kazas case.14 This in-formation has been deemed inaccurate by representatives of the village com-

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munity. In 2016, Russia also submitted its 6th periodic report to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.15 It furthermore submitted its 4th report under the Council of Europe Framework Convention National Minorities (FC-NM).16

The UN Development Programme has been working on a project aimed at the conservation of biodiversity in Kemerovo region and Kazas under which i.a. a guidebook for “social dialogue” between coal mining companies and indigenous communities was drafted. The Kazas community was very concerned at this guidebook, for one thing because the INECA consultancy that was commissioned to draft it usually works for mining companies and therefore has a track record of acting in a way that is harmful to indigenous interests. Further, because it did not include key international standards such as FPIC and respect for customary land rights and, finally, because the guidebook urges the consideration of international standards explicitly for those cases where foreign businesses are involved, rather than for all cases including those where no international or foreign creditor or business partner requires them. �

Notes and references

1 Federal Act 171-FZ dated 23 June 2014.2 Item 3 of Art. 31 of the Land Code of the Russian Federation before entry into force of the

changes made by 171-FZ.3 Aborigeny Khabarovskogo kraia gotovy ob’javit’ massovuyu golodovku, 14 October 2016, http://www.vostokmedia.com/r3/14-10-2016/n301596.html, in the case of one TTNU, the admin-

istration seems to have used the Far East Hectare campaign to illegally transfer the territory to a logging company, see “V �habarovskom krae territorii traditsionnogo prirodopol’zovaniya koren-nykh narodov iz’jali dlya lesozagotovok”, 18 December 2016, http://www.csipn.ru/glavnaya/nov-osti-regionov/2949-v-khabarovskom-krae-territorii-traditsionnogo-prirodopolzovaniya-koren-nykh-narodov-iz-yali-dlya-lesozagotovok.

4 The spiritual significance of Numto is also evidenced by the fact that, in the 1930s, state-sanc-tioned fishing was one of the causes of the Kazym rebellion, the last armed insurrection of Khanty people against Soviet rule.

5 Order (postanovlenie) of the Government of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area No. 415-p, dated 28 October 2016.

6 Russia: “Heavenly lake”” Numto threatened by oil extraction, April 14 2016, http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news?news_id=13257 The Guardian: Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change kills boy in Arctic Circle https://

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/anthrax-outbreak-climate-change-arctic-circle-russia8 Russia: Administration orders mass reindeer killing and fast-tracks gas extraction. September 17

2016, http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news?news_id=1396


9 The recent experience of a Greenpeace Russia expedition to Taimyr is reported in the article “Ekologi grinpis rasskazali o masshtabnom sabotazhe i slezhke v ekspeditss na Taimyr”, dated 8 September 2016, http://www.rosbalt.ru/russia/2016/09/08/1548466.html

10 Russia bans indigenous peoples’ traditional fishing, June 14 2016, http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news?news_id=137311 http://shorskynp.ru/12 http://ud-legend.ru/13 See the Early warning section of the CERD web page: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CERD/Pages/EarlyWarningProcedure.aspx14 http://undocs.org/CERD/C/RUS/23-2415 http://undocs.org/E/C.12/RUS/616 Available from http://www.coe.int/en/web/minorities/russian-federation

Olga Murashko is a Russian anthropologist and one of the co-founders of the former IWGIA Moscow. She works as a consultant for the Centre for the Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CSIPN).

Johannes Rohr is a German historian who has been working with indigenous peoples’ organisations in Russia since 1995, focusing on their economic, social and cultural rights. He is currently working as a consultant for IWGIA and INFOE.


ABOUT IWGIA

About IWGIA

We are an international human rights organisation defending indigenous peoples’ rights. For almost 50 years, we have documented the fight for indigenous peoples’ rights. We are working through a global network of indigenous peoples’ organisations and international mechanisms. We promote the recognition, respect and implementa-tion of indigenous peoples’ rights to land, cultural integrity and development on their own terms. We enhance change by empowering indigenous peoples to mobilise com-munities and by developing their capacity to access the UN system and decision-making processes at a local, regional and international level.

Our mission

We work for a world where indigenous peoples’ voices are heard and their rights are implemented.

Our vision

A world where all indigenous peoples fully enjoy their rights, participate and are con-sulted on decisions that affect their lives. We exist to ensure a world where indigenous peoples can sustain and develop their societies based on their own practices, priori-ties and visions.

How to get involved

We are pleased to know that you are currently reading through this edition of the In-digenous World. We hope that you will share this book and our other publications. You can follow our work by signing up for our newsletter http://bit.ly/IWGIANewsletter and follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/IWGIA/ and twitter https://twitter.com/IWGIA for weekly updates.

Your political and economic support is an important sign of your commitment with the indigenous cause. We welcome all contributions to our work. If you are interested in supporting us, please find various options here: http://bit.ly/IWGIAActNow.

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IWGIA PUBLICATIONS 2016

In English The Indigenous World 2016 Edited by Diana Vinding & Cæcilie Mikkelsen ISBN 978-87-92786-69-2

Indigenous Heroines: A Saga of Tribal Women of India Alma Grace Barla IWGIA ISBN 978-87-92786-61-6

Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Descendent Communities, and Natural Resources: Human Rights Protection in the Context of Extraction, Exploitation, and Development Activities OAS & IWGIA ISBN 978-0-8270-6557-4

IWGIA Report 22: The San in Zimbabwe - Livelihoods, Land and Human Rights Edited by Marianne Wiben Jensen & Diana Vinding IWGIA ISBN 978-87-92786-62-3

IWGIA Report 23: Tanzanian Pastoralists Threatened – Evictions, Human Rights Violations and Loss of Livelihood Edited by IWGIA, Carol Sørensen & Diana Vinding ISBN 978-87-92786-66-1

Publications can be ordered online at:www.iwgia.org

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