http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-12/s_13061.asp
Indigenous people demand rights protection at U.N.-backed conference
Thursday, February 12, 2004
By Sean Yoong, Associated Press
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Indigenous people from around the world demanded at a conference Wednesday that governments respect aboriginal land ownership and halt development and resettlement programs that can harm the environment.
Hundreds of thousands of indigenous people have been displaced from their territories, often by modernization programs that don't adequately compensate them, activists said on the sidelines of a U.N.-backed biodiversity conference.
"Atrocities against indigenous people across the world are incredible," said Canadian activist Fred Fortier of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.
Indigenous groups urged governments at the conference to enforce policies that give communities the right to reject development projects, Fortier said. They also want the right to fight involuntary resettlement and reject any unilateral creation of protected areas or commercial exploitation of their natural resources, Fortier said.
He was speaking at the nearly two-week Seventh Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which started Monday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. More than 2,000 government delegates, scientists, and environmentalists at the conference will discuss a plan to help indigenous people share wealth created by their resources.
But some activists said this misses the point that aboriginal communities often place their cultural and spiritual values above financial reward.
"We are linked to our land," said Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Congo's Mbuti pygmies. "We must not be ordered to leave for money or material compensation. That is not what we're seeking."
Makelo accused African authorities of expelling indigenous people to create national parks and forest reserves — then letting Western companies plunder the "protected" areas for profit.
Native communities in South America and Asia are often forcibly resettled due to dam construction, logging, and land-clearing, activists said.
Indigenous groups want governments to stop companies from getting patents that let them own indigenous knowledge of medicine and agriculture — which they use to develop medicines and other products — without indigenous groups' consent, said Debra Harry, a Northern Paiute Indian from the U.S. state of Nevada.
U.N. officials say human activities cause the extinction of 60,000 plant and animal species every year. The Kuala Lumpur conference aims to study ways to slow down such losses, in line with goals set by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But officials say conservation targets are proving difficult, since the United States has yet to ratify the treaty. They say other countries have done little to implement policies protecting endangered species, as security and trade overshadow environmental concerns.
Source: Associated Press