Letters: Indigenous people's rights

Two Orang Utan and some of the last standing trees

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/05/29/letters-indigenous-people039s-rights.html

Letters: Indigenous people's rights

| Sat, 05/29/2010 11:28 AM | Readers Forum

This is a response to an article titled "RI seeks *breakthrough' REDD-Plus action in Oslo," (May 24).

Ensuring the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) works for Indigenous People and Local Communities?

On Sept. 13, 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) to which the Indonesian government voted in favor.

The UNDRIP stipulates one key provision that Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a right of indigenous people. Since then the Indonesian government should have put in place affirmative action of immediate measures, with a clear cut-off date, that there, first, will be no more legal permits and new projects after Sept. 13, 2007 issued without FPIC; second, that projects/permits/land titles issued before Sept. 13, 2007 without FPIC are subject to renegotiation with affected indigenous peoples.

Violations against Article 32 (verse 2) of the UNDRIP must trigger the constitutional obligation of the state to (1) provide restitution to property rights taken without FPIC; (2) remedy the abuses of rights of the affected indigenous peoples; and (3) institutionalize conflict mechanisms and resources for consistent and meaningful FPIC implementation.

Any REDD, including REDD+ and UNREDD programs, cannot narrow down indigenous people's rights to forests and land resources. Any REDD program must address these rights and issues especially rights to their lands and territories; rights to control their natural resources; rights to exercise customary law; and the right to self-determination.

Indigenous people have the right to give or withhold their FPIC to measures that will affect them, including potential REDD schemes. Concern is that FPIC is being considered the right to say "yes" but not the right to say "no".

Whether things have been put right from the outset or not, Indonesia still maintains conditions on the recognition on indigenous peoples and their ancestral domains.

Will President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono put things right?

Norman Jiwan
Bogor, West Java