Request for Consideration of the Situation of the Saramaka People of Suriname under the UN CERD's Urgent Action and Early Warning Procedures. 12 February 2013

This request is submitted by the Association of Saramaka Authorities, an association representing the traditional authorities of the Saramaka people, and the Forest Peoples Programme. It seeks the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s urgent assistance to avoid grave and irreparable harm to the Saramaka people caused by Suriname’s imminent granting of new and massive mining rights, as well as its further construction of a substantial hydropower project to provide power for these mining operations, both in Saramaka territory. The human rights situation of the Saramaka has previously been extensively addressed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in its landmark 2007 Saramaka People v. Suriname judgment. These new mining rights and the hydropower project both directly contravene the orders of the Court as well as the recommendations, including urgent action decisions, adopted by the Committee with regard to the situation in Suriname. 

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