NATIVE_NEWS: WORKING GROUP ON INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS

[Ish]

And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 19:11:41 +0200
From: "Elsbeth Vocat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Pueblo Indio

UNITED NATIONS  Press Release
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           WORKING GROUP ON INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS
            TO MEET AT PALAIS DES NATIONS FROM 26 TO 30
                                    JULY
                                                                    
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                                                             HR/99/70
                                                          22 July 1999


The Working Group on Indigenous Populations will hold its seventeenth
session from 26-30 July at the Palais des Nations. Participants will focus,
among other things, on the topic of "Indigenous peoples and their
relationship to land".

The session will open at 11 a.m. on 26 July.

Established in 1982 to develop a better understanding of the situation of
indigenous peoples and to consider whether there was a need to elaborate
international standards for their protection, the Working Group has become
one of the UN's major human-rights bodies and the principal international
forum for the world's indigenous people. It is a subsidiary body of the
Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

Over the years, the Working Group has been responsible for launching most
of the UN's policy initiatives on indigenous issues, including studies on
treaties, land and intellectual property rights, the draft declaration on
the rights of indigenous peoples now being reviewed by Governments, and the
International Decade of the World's Indigenous People currently under way.
It also has sponsored numerous expert seminars and workshops on indigenous
concerns.

An expected 1,000 participants -- mostly representatives of indigenous
nations and peoples -- will attend this year's session and will inform the
UN about their situation.

In addressing the topic of indigenous peoples and their relationship to
land, it is certain that indigenous delegates will stress their strong
attachment to mother earth, the continuing story of dispossession and
despoliation of their traditional territories, and their demand for legal
recognition of their collective ownership over their homelands. Governments
are expected to report on recent legislation to strengthen indigenous
rights over their lands, such as a measure establishing the province of
Nunavut in Canada where the Inuit have political control over a land area
the size of France.

As usual, there will be many parallel meetings, briefings and film
screenings taking place during the luncheon periods, including a recent
film on Nunavut, a workshop on indigenous peoples and the private sector,
briefings by the

European Community, International Labour Office and World Bank, and
meetings on tourism and the situation of the world's nomadic peoples.

The International Day of the World's Indigenous People will be celebrated
on Friday, 30 July, the last day of the session. Although the official date
for the International Day is 9 August, it was decided by the High
Commissioner for Human Rights that the commemoration should occur during
the annual session of the Working Group. The ceremony will be held from
9:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Ariana Park of the Palais des Nations, in front
of the Armillary Sphere. In addition to cultural presentations by
indigenous groups from Latin America, North America, Africa, the Arctic,
Russia, Oceania, and Asia, there will be statements by Vladimir Petrovsky,
Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva; Erica-Irene A.
Daes, Chairperson/Rapporteur of the Working Group; and by a representative
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Further information on the activities of this year's Working Group may be
obtained from Julian Burger, the group's Secretary, in Room XVIII or by

telephone at extensions 77156 or 77158.

Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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