Resources

Press Event to Issue Research in Advance of the RSPO’s 11th Annual Meeting in Medan; NGOs From Across Asia and Africa Question Effectiveness of RSPO Standards.

• Full report (6.9MB): Conflict or consent?

On Monday October 21, 2013 the Government of Guyana and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed a contract for the Amerindian Land Titling Project under the Guyana/Norway Guyana REDD Investment Fund (GRIF) arrangement. This signing took place during the opening session of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the National Toshaos Council and is heralded by President Donald Ramotar as fulfilling a promise made to the Amerindian people in the PPP’s manifesto. Campaigning? According to another government official Minister of Finance Ashni Singh, the project will give Amerindians control over the lands that belong to them. The project, according to the government is to facilitate the titling and demarcation of Amerindian lands. 

In statements published in a Peruvian national newspaper and online, both AIDESEP (the national indigenous Amazonian organisation) and over 50 Peruvian and international civil society organisations, including Forest Peoples Programme, have reiterated their demand that the State establish strict measures for the protection of isolated peoples in Peru.

The board of controversial mining giant BHP Billiton is set to be slammed at its AGM by an Indonesian activist over seven coal concessions collectively covering an area of more than 350,000 hectares in the relatively unspoilt rainforest centre of the island of Borneo. Part of this project overlaps the transnational Heart of Borneo conservation area, described by the Asian Development Bank as “the lungs of Southeast Asia".

Photos in an internal report by a Peruvian government agency reveal illegal clearings in a reserve in the Amazon purportedly protecting indigenous peoples living in ‘voluntary isolation’ and ‘initial contact.’

Source: The Huffington PostA United Nations committee says that plans by Peru's government to expand a controversial gas project in the Amazon could threaten the 'physical and cultural survival' of indigenous peoples.

Liberian NGO Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) have filed a complaint on behalf of 363 community members from Jogbahn Clan in Grand Bassa County with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) against Equatorial Palm Oil plc. 

Source: TebtebbaNORTH SUMATRA, Indonesia, (Tebtebba Indigenous Information Service) – Manuhap Pandiangan easily climbed a 10-inch-diameter straight tree through two small pieces of two-foot long hard wood tightly fastened around the tree with a nylon rope. Then he uttered some prayers, and—around the tree up to about over 20 feet (5.88 meters) high—pierced the tree’s bark with a sharp knife, leaving several wounds on the tree’s bark. 

On the eve of the Peruvian government's final consultation with indigenous peoples on the draft investment plan of the FIP, indigenous organisations expressed their cautious welcome of the latest version of the plan, which includes key agreements on their customary land rights reached with indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, they expressed their grave concern that last minute adjustments were made to the plan without their agreement.

Nurman Nuri, Leader of the Suku Anak Dalam group 113 of Pinang Tinggi in the Indonesian province of Jambi, stated in a press conference held on 3 October 2013 at the office of Indonesian NGO CAPPA: "We demand that the Governor of Jambi Province immediately revokes the HGU (Business Use Permit) of PT Asiatic Persada, as since its establishment in the 1980s no benefits at all have been derived by the indigenous Suku Anak Dalam living in this territory, only misery."

PRESS INFORMATION - For immediate releaseDemocratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - On Thursday, 19th September, Rodrigue Katembo Mugaruka a warden in Virunga National Park and recipient of the Abraham Conservation Award was arrested by Congolese security forces and taken to Goma. We, the undersigned, are extremely concerned about the ranger's well-being and the circumstances of his arrest.

We live in a time when public opinion is demanding a fairer and more equitable planet. There is no more important element to address this than the equality of men and women. This 4-minute animation video, produced by AIPP, outlines the recommendations from CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) and UNDRIP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) particularly on indigenous women that guide and help us to move in this direction.

A new film by the community rights support NGO, HuMA, explains the Constitutional Court's ruling recognising that customary forests are not within State forests. While the historic ruling has opened a way towards justice for indigenous peoples to reclaim as much as 40 million hectares of their forests, the ruling still leaves it to the Government to first clarify who are indigenous peoples and where their territories actually are before the Forestry Ministry is obliged to reclassify their claimed areas as outside of State Forests.

The text of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the decisions of the Conference of the Parties and its subsidiary bodies use the phrase ‘indigenous and local communities’. At its ninth session in 2010, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) called upon the parties to the CBD “to adopt the terminology ‘indigenous peoples and local communities’, as an accurate reflection of the distinct identities developed by those entities since the adoption of the Convention almost 20 years ago.”[1]  At its tenth session in 2011, the UNPFII further stated that “Affirmation of the status of indigenous peoples as “peoples” is important in fully respecting and protecting their human rights”.[2]

From 7 – 9 August 2013, representatives  from National Human Rights Institutions of the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Timor Leste and Myanmar and supportive civil society organisations, met in Bangkok to assess developments in the agribusiness sector and human rights since the Bali Declaration on Human Rights and Agribusiness in Southeast Asia in 2011 and the Phnom Penh Workshop on Human Rights and Agribusiness in 2012, and to develop an action plan for the effective enforcement of human rights by State parties in the agribusiness sector. The meeting was convened by the Thai National Human Rights Commission, with the support of the Forest Peoples Programme and the Rights and Resources Initiative. 

On 25 July 2013, 26 Indonesian and international organisations and the Forest Peoples Programme, submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN-CERD) requesting its consideration of the situation of the Malind and other indigenous peoples of Merauke in the Indonesian province of Papua under the Committee’s urgent action and early warning procedures (EW/UA procedures).