UN creates forum for aboriginals

International Indian Treaty Council

CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

	“WORKING FOR THE RIGHTS AND RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES"

Copyright 2000 Southam Inc.
The Gazette (Montreal)

July 29, 2000, Saturday, FINAL

SECTION: News; A14

LENGTH: 676 words

HEADLINE: UN creates forum for aboriginals

BYLINE: JOE LAURIA

DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS

BODY:
The United Nations yesterday established a permanent forum that will allow indigenous peoples from Canada to Australia to bring their grievances to a UN body on which they will sit.

''It is an exhilarating, historic day, '' said Matthew Coon Come, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. ''Indigenous people as wards of the state is gone. We've moved into a new era where we can participate as citizens of the world directly in the UN.''

Coon Come addressed the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) yesterday afternoon and later in an interview said: ''The Supreme Court in Canada is not the last resort now, the permanent forum gives us an avenue to go beyond domestic law.''

The new body will have indigenous representatives permanently at the UN for the first time. It replaces a working group of a subcommittee of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva that deals with indigenous issues but has no indigenous people on it.

The new forum is a sub-group of the UN's Economic and Social Council, and is on a similar level with the human-rights commission itself. Until now, indigenous people could appeal to the UN on vague human-rights issues only. The permanent forum will deal individually with human rights, environmental, educational and economic issues affecting indigenous people around the globe.

Most of the details of how the forum will function will be worked out by 2002, such as where it will be seated and how representatives will be chosen. The forum will have 16 members, eight indigenous people, and eight from the rest of the world.

The working group that will be replaced had only five members, all non-indigenous. Its chairman is Miguel Alfonso Martinez, a Cuban, who now stands to lose his job in 2002.

Cuba was the only country in the ECOSOC chamber yesterday that opposed the creation of the forum and on Thursday blocked Coon Come from speaking. Coon Come thanked the Canadian delegation for fighting to allow him to take the rostrum yesterday.

Diplomats and officials said Cuba's main reason for opposing the forum was protecting Martinez's job, since Cuba has virtually no indigenous population. In the end, Havana agreed under protest.

Coon Come said in an interview that he will bring grievances to the forum if all solutions within Canada are exhausted.

For example, he said the UN human- rights commission and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples have asked Canada to abolish its policy of extinguishing aboriginal title in wide- ranging claims, which the federal government has not done. If this is not resolved, the AFN leader says he will take the issue to the forum when it opens in 2002.

He also is prepared to go before the UN body on the issue of natural resources. Companies in those industries ''are taking trees out of our land and bringing them across the border. They are taking fish, oil, minerals across the border. So why not use an international forum?''

The creation of the permanent forum was first proposed by the human- rights commission in 1993. Since that time, it faced opposition from Brazil and India, both of which have sizable indigenous peoples. France was also concerned about its indigenous people on New Caledonia. Australia was in favour initially under its Labour government, but a conservative government that followed expressed reservations, given its large aboriginal population.

In the end, these countries dropped their opposition and agreed with the consensus decision to create the forum.

The United States also had several concerns, but supported the move. A U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the main problems were how the forum's representatives would be chosen and a lack of co-ordination between the UN's standing bodies on development and the environment and the new forum.

The UN, according to its charter, does not insert itself into the internal affairs of states. By creating the forum, the UN does confer a sort of
international status on indigenous people, diplomats said.

GRAPHIC: P Photo: Coon Come: ''Historic day.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: July 30, 2000