CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

United Nations Human Rights Council, 4th session

March 12  – 30, 2007

Thank you Mr. Chairman

We very much welcome the Special Event in this session of the Human Rights Council focused on Violence against Children, and we hope that this indicates that the Rights of the Child will remain a central priority of the Council’s work.

Many Indigenous children are affected by armed conflicts around the world, as well as other forms of military activities including weapons testing and forced relocations related to militarization of Indigenous Peoples lands in many countries around the world.

We are also concerned with other forms of human rights violations and abuses being carried out against Indigenous children, in both developed and developing countries where Indigenous children are victims of legally sanctioned removals from their communities as well as violence and even death as a result of state-sponsored programs and policies.

For example, Indigenous Peoples, State and religious authorities of Canada are finally coming to terms with the inter-generational trauma caused by Canada’s forced removal program affecting many thousands of Indigenous children in past generations.  Under this policy, Indigenous Children were removed from their families at a very young age, in many cases for a period of several years.  Families and parents that refused to cooperate were subject to legal penalties, including fines and incarceration.  

Today, the Canadian residential schools are closed, but the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities continues through the Canadian Governments’ foster care program.  At the current time, the Canadian government estimates that one in every eighteen Indigenous children in Canada is in state-sponsored foster care custody,  more than at any time during the residential school era.  .  

The Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations representing 18 First Nations in Alberta Canada, reports that the Canadian government provides adequate funds for prevention and early intervention program to non-Indigenous provincial agencies in order to help those families to stay intact.  However, it does not provide the same level of funding for First Nations Child and Family Service Agencies to support Indigenous families identified as high risk to keep their children in the home.  In fact, so called ”maintenance” funds from the government are provided to agencies dealing with First Nations families only if the child is actually removed from the home and living in foster care.

The removal of children from their communities or “group” is a well-recognized and well-defined violation of international human rights law.   

Another directly-related concern is the ongoing numbers of deaths and injuries of Indigenous children in the governmental foster care custody, including many babies and children with physical and mental disabilities.  Indigenous NGO’s in Canada report that these deaths have not been adequately investigated and no effective solutions have been proposed to date.

Many Indigenous leaders in Canada, as well as many who work directly with Indigenous children, youth and families, believe that the high rates of suicide and incarceration of Indigenous youth in that country are directly related to the factors described above. According to a report issued in 1995 by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the rate of suicide among Native youth is five to six times higher than the Canadian average.

We appreciate your recognition that not only in the so-called developing world are Indigenous children victims of violence and in urgent need of the immediate attention of this Council.     

For all our relations.