scholarly journals How to Make Them Hear: Challenging International Oil Interests in Ecuador's Amazon Region

Refuge ◽  
1997 ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Malcolm Rogge

This article discusses how oil development in the Amazon basin of Ecuador threatens to displace indigenous peoples through environmental contamination and colonization. It presents approaches to capacity-building for indigenous and mestizo-settler communities to deal with threats to human rights and the environment due to oil development. While the focus is on transnational oil operations in the Ecuadorian Oriente, many of the issues and empowerment methods discussed here are transferable to other local/global conflicts around the world, especially where indigenous and peasant communities are adversely affected by transnational resource extraction activities (mining, forestry, and oil).

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung Sook de Vries ◽  
Anna Meijknecht

AbstractSoutheast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world. Nevertheless, unlike minorities and indigenous peoples in Western states, minorities and indigenous peoples in Asia have never received much attention from politicians or legal scholars. The level of minority protection varies from state to state, but can, in general, be called insufficient. At the regional level, for instance, within the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), there are no mechanisms devoted specifically to the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples. In December 2008, the ASEAN Charter entered into force. In July 2009 the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights were adopted. Both the Charter and the ToR refer to human rights and to cultural diversity, but omit to refer explicitly to minorities or indigenous peoples. In this article, the extent to which this reticence with regard to the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples is dictated by the concept of Asian values and ASEAN values is explored. Further, it is analysed how, instead, ASEAN seeks to accommodate the enormous cultural diversity of this region of the world within its system. Finally, the tenability of ASEAN's policy towards minorities and indigenous peoples in the light of, on the one hand, the requirements of international legal instruments concerning the protection of minorities and indigenous peoples and, on the other hand, the policies of the national states that are members of ASEAN is determined.


1997 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 812-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Mason

Of all the rights of indigenous people, none is more central to the survival of their culture than the claim to their ancestral lands. The resolution of their claims to ancestral lands is one of the fundamental issues of our time—indeed of all time. Often called a human rights issue—a description apt to reinforce the strong moral foundations of the claims of the indigenous peoples—it is an issue which we cannot ignore. Throughout the world people of all races and all colours have a powerful emotional attachment to their ancestral lands. That attachment is the very core of a people's culture and is vital to the survival of the culture. As the UN Human Rights Committee has recognised, in the context of the exercise of cultural rights protected by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “culture manifests itself in many forms, including a particular way of life associated with the use of land resources”.


Author(s):  
Heyward Madeleine

This chapter explores the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII), which is the first permanent UN body in which state and non-state nominees hold equal status. The PFII is primarily a product of increasing recognition within the UN system of the need for more focused attention to protect and promote indigenous peoples’ rights—full accommodation of indigenous rights within existing human rights mechanisms and instruments ‘remains elusive’, and indigenous individuals and communities across the world continue to experience significant discrimination and social and economic disadvantage. Since the adoption in 2007 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the first comprehensive and generally applicable international instrument on indigenous rights, the PFII has taken an increasingly rights-based approach across its mandate. The chapter then considers the PFII’s institutional landscape and its strengths and weaknesses as a protector and promoter of human rights, with a focus on implementation of the Declaration.


Author(s):  
Tamas Wells

This chapter unpacks a liberal narrative of democracy. It grounds and locates the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. The chapter outlines three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers involved in the research pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and the protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar’s democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional systems toward a democratic future. Third, many aid workers emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-871
Author(s):  
Anita Z. Rakhman

The activities of the United Nations in the 21st century, as in the earlier period, are undoubtedly devoted to protection and promotion of human rights. It promotes the realization of fundamental human rights through specialized agencies in various fields taking in account concerns and needs of vulnerable groups of population, in particular indigenous peoples. The World Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), in its turn, develops policies and implements strategies and programs to guarantee food security and the right to food to aboriginal people around the world, including in Latin America.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Abstract:Indigenous peoples’ emphasis on protecting their cultural heritage (including land) through a human rights-based approach reveals the synergies and conflicts between the World Heritage Convention and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This article focuses on how their insistence on the right to participate effectively in decision-making and centrality of free, prior, and informed consent as defined in the UNDRIP exposes the limitations of existing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and World Heritage Convention processes effecting Indigenous peoples, cultures, and territories and how these shortcomings can be addressed. By tracking the evolution of the UNDRIP and the World Heritage Convention from their drafting and adoption to their implementation, it examines how the realization of Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination concerning cultural heritage is challenging international law to become more internally consistent in its interpretation and application and international organizations to operate in accordance with their constitutive instruments.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-244
Author(s):  
Stéphanie de Moerloose

The question of the consent of indigenous peoples is at least as old as colonization. Indeed, the consent of indigenous peoples was already an issue at the heart of treaty-making between colonial settlers and indigenous peoples. The issue of indigenous peoples’ consent, understood as their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), has been re-emerging and gaining acceptance internationally in international Human Rights law over the last 30 years. When the new World Bank safeguards were adopted in 2016, one of the most discussed topics during the consultation rounds had been the integration in the safeguards of the concept of the FPIC of indigenous peoples, as it had been notoriously absent from the previous safeguards. Finally, FPIC was made part of the new safeguards. This paper first maps the concept of FPIC under international law from a postcolonial perspective. Then, it attempts to analyze the processes of operationalization of the concept by the World Bank in the new safeguards, drawing on Human Rights and on law and development literature. The paper argues that there is a tension between the re-emergence of FPIC as a customary norm and the fragmentation of the interpretations of the concept of consent by different actors. The operationalization of the concept of FPIC, understood as a negotiated process rather than a process of self-determination, may in fact limit its remedial objective and diminish its quality as a resistance tool.


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