Human Rights

Samburu families who are suing Kenya’s former president Daniel arap Moi celebrated a small but significant victory in a Kenyan courtroom May 12, when their lawyers persuaded a high court judge to allow them more time to prepare their case. 

In a historic ruling in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, Colombia’s Constitutional Court halted three industrial projects for not properly consulting affected Indigenous communities nor gaining their consent.

Les Malezer, a member of Cultural Survival's board of directors, has just been elected the first co-chair of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, which aims to unite all of the country's Indigenous populations and represent their interests in the nation as a whole.

After 25 years of negotiations, the UN General Assembly in 2007 adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, without doubt the most advanced human rights instrument created for sub-state peoples. The standards laid out in the declaration are a remarkable achievement for the international Indigenous movement. The right to self-determination; free, prior, and informed consent; and territories—with the emphasis on the collective—are breakthroughs. And its impact can be seen already.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2001 to 2008, the first person to hold that office. He conducted rigorous on-the-ground investigations of violations of Indigenous rights in a dozen countries, interviewing victims and collecting hard data on government actions. He also issued comprehensive reports that made specific recommendations for changes, restitution, and reconciliation.

Foster care is hard on children anywhere, but it’s especially hard on Native children who are placed with non-Native families—a process that strips them of their identity and heritage.

In 1976, Chief Wilton Littlechild had the distinction of being the first Treaty First Nation person to acquire his law degree from the University of Alberta. He also received his master’s degree in physical education in 1975. In addition to running his own law firm from the Ermineskin Reserve, Chief Littlechild is a strong advocate for the rights of Indigenous Peoples. He was the chairperson for the Commission on First Nations and Métis Peoples and Justice Reform, and served as a member of Parliament from 1988–1993 for the riding of Wetaskiwin-Rimby.

The Canadian Truth Commission process includes a group of elder Aboriginal advisors, to help guide the commission. One of those advisors is Joseph Williams Jr. (Taa-eee-sim-chilth), who is Nuu-chah-nulth and a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations in Meares Island, British Columbia. An elder and survivor of Indian Residential Schools, he is fluent in the Nuu-chah-nulth language.

Beginning in the 1880s, Aboriginal children across Canada were removed, often forcibly, from their homes and placed in Indian Residential Schools. At the schools, students were forbidden to speak Native languages and practice their culture. Testimony from surviving former students presents overwhelming evidence of widespread neglect, starvation, extensive physical and sexual abuse, and many student deaths related to these crimes.

Papuan women have been suffering terrible violence both outside and inside their homes for the past 40 years, and for most of that time, they’ve suffered in silence. But now a group of women has launched their own truth commission to give support to the victims and to pressure the government to change its behavior.

Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea) has long been in a state of upheaval. When Indonesia declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945 and achieved international recognition in 1949, Papua remained under Dutch rule.

Editor’s Note: This special theme section was produced in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice, which works to redress and prevent the most severe violations of human rights by confronting legacies of mass abuse. Among the many programs and efforts that ICTJ pursues is the Truth and Memory Program, which supports efforts to preserve memory of crimes committed by governments against their own people. And one focus of the Truth and Memory Program has been truth commissions for Indigenous Peoples.

Hello and greetings to the membership, friends, and constituents of Cultural Survival.

As I step into the role of executive director, I am both honored and challenged to take up the responsibility of leading an organization that works to represent the voices of Indigenous Peoples and their rights to protect their land, culture, and future generations. The enormousness of the issues globally is daunting in the face of the rapid loss of biodiversity and climate change.

After an exhaustive international search, Cultural Survival’s board of directors has named Suzanne Benally as the new executive director of the organization—the first Indigenous director Cultural Survival has had. She is Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa from New Mexico.

Benally, who took up her new duties on February 1, comes to Cultural Survival from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she was the associate provost for institutional planning and assessment and associate vice president for academic affairs.

GUATEMALA- On March 23, 2011, The United Nations Office for Human Rights in Guatemala gave a presentation to a packed audience on the state of human rights in Guatemala throughout the year 2010.

On January 27, 2011, Botswana’s Court of Appeal reversed a ruling that denied the Kalahari Bushmen access to water on their ancestral lands. The Bushmen appealed a 2010 High Court judgment that prevented them from accessing a borehole. The new ruling not only gave the Bushmen rights to use the borehole, but also gave them the right to drill new ones and ordered the government to pay the Bushmen’s court costs.   

In 2002, the Botswana government forced the Bushmen from their lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and into what amounted to refugee camps.

Guatemala's Coordinadora Nacional Indigena y Campesina reports that on January 10, 2011 police in the department of Alta Verapaz have attacked the Q’eqchi’ Mayan village of  Se’ Job’ Che’, destroying their crops and animals and firing on the people.

On November 16, 2010 the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on indigenous issues which included a decision to organize a world Indigenous Peoples Conference in 2014.

At its sixty-fourth session, the United Nation's General Assembly discussed the findings of the Secretary General’s midterm report tracking the progress made in the Second International Decade of