International indigenous campaign meets opposition AAP -- In 1985, leaders of more than 300 million indigenous peoples in over 70 countries started campaigning for a UN declaration recognising their right to self determination and land. But indigenous leaders say their campaign has run into strong opposition on those two key demands from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. As representatives of native peoples from around the globe gathered yesterday at the United Nations to mark the International Day of the World's Indigenous People, there was no celebration - just a sobering assessment of the struggles ahead. "Indigenous people have been basically ignored in many cases, are some of the poorest of the poor, and are also some of the most excluded in the development process," said Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, the World Bank representative at the United Nations. "They are facing serious discrimination in terms of human rights, property, and also culture and citizenship," he told a news conference. Indigenous leaders have been campaigning for a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People to take the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights a step further and affirm that indigenous peoples are equal in dignity and rights to all other peoples - but also have a right to be different. A draft declaration, adopted in 1994 and currently being considered by a working group of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights, would protect religious practices and ceremonies of indigenous peoples, their languages and oral traditions. It would also give indigenous peoples - including native Americans and Canadians, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, and South American Quechua and Mapuche - the right to self-determination and the right to own, develop, control and use their traditional lands, waters and other resources. "This declaration is making very slow progress," said Bacre Waly Ndiaye, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "For many governments, it's very important to allow prospecting for gold and for oil anywhere - and they're clashing with people for whom the land where they want to prospect is sacred," he said. ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
