©Tom McElroy

The Plight

Guest post by Tom McElroy  

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are more than 370 million indigenous people living in 70 countries throughout the world.  Despite their remoteness and relative separation from the western world, indigenous groups like the
Waorani often find themselves and their independence imposed upon by extractive industries, religious missionaries, settlers and states seeking political and territorial control.

Despite these groups historical continuity, the impact of outside contact generally has had deleterious effects on their physical, social and cultural well being.  In fact, indigenous people suffer from less education, greater poverty, higher suicide rates, infant mortality, incidences of communicable disease, rates of nutritional deficiency, and earlier deaths than the rest of the surrounding population in almost every nation (Amnesty 2008, IWGIA, 2006).  According to WHO, indigenous people are among the world's most marginalized population groups globally, and are frequently and pervasively subjugated to discrimination, violations of the right to life, health, land and traditions.  Essentially, they are the people whose position in the modern world is the least tenable (Niezen, 2003).

Indigenous cultural groups are marauded by a myriad of forces that impede their right to territory, natural resources, administration of justice, culture, education, autonomy, political participation and the right to self-determination.  As indigenous people struggle to manage the encroachment of the western world, they also struggle to maintain their historical connection to their land and traditions.  However, this is not always easy, and indigenous groups often find themselves caught.  As stated by a woman of the Tiwi Islands “Our children are stuck somewhere between a past they don’t understand and a future that won’t accept them and offers them nothing."

After years of neglect, the United Nations officially recognized the particular vulnerability of indigenous people with the creation of the ILO Convention #169 in 1989, and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007.  As recognized in the Declaration, “indigenous people have suffered from historic injustices as a result of their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests."  Since the creation of the ILO 169, various steps have been taken and UN agreements have been created within human rights law to protect the rights and well being of indigenous groups. The movement gaining the most attention began in 1993 with the UN declared “International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People” (1995-2004)--a decade devoted to promoting international cooperation with regards to indigenous issues related to human rights, culture, the environment, development, education and health.

Despite the intentions of this decade, numerous UN members, including Kofi Annan, declared this decade a “complete failure” and indigenous people continued to suffer from the worst health reports globally (UNESC, 2004).  Due to the pervasive belief in the failure of the first decade the UN decided to create the “Second Decade of the World’s Indigenous People” from (2005-2014).  While some progress has been made during this decade, many problems persist and Indigenous People continue to face gross human rights violations from numerous actors.

As I continue blogging, I will attempt to show where and why international regulations fail to protect indigenous people by identifying accountability gaps in international laws that allow Transnational Corporations to avoid responsibility toward Indigenous groups.  I will also focus on how these loopholes have impeded the administration of justice in the case of Chevron/Texaco and the Waorani.

--Tom McElroy is a graduate student in International Policy at the University of Connecticut, and a professional photographer. 

Sources:

Amnesty International. (2008). Leave us in peace! targeting civilians in columbia's internal conflict. Amensty International, AMR 23/023/2008, Retrieved from http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR23/023/2008/en

IWGIA, 2006. The Indigenous World 2006, International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), ECOSOC Consultative Status, p10

Niezen, R. (2003). The origin of indigenism:human rights and the politics of identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

United Nations Economic and Social Council (2004). Report of the Secretary-General on the preliminary review by the Coordinator of the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People on the activities of the United Nations system in relation to the Decade. New York, UN.

WHO. (2007). Health of indigenous people. World Health Organization Fact Sheet No 326,Retrieved.from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs326/en/index.html