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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: TEBTEBBA INDIGENOUS INFORMATION SERVICE Dear Friends, Please find below recent news on IP issues and situations. 1.COLOMBIA:Indigenous Women Brave War Zone to Express Solidarity By: Constanza Vieira 2.TSUNAMI-IMPACT:Acehnese Women Rediscover Role in Society By: Fabio Scarpello 3.ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE:Maori 'Marae' Integral to New Zealand Tourism By: Neena Bhandari 4.COLOMBIA:Indigenous Women Help Preserve Biodiversity By: Constanza Vieira 5.DEVELOPMENT: Indigenous People Want Power to Veto World Bank Plans By: Haider Rizvi ********************** COLOMBIA:Indigenous Women Brave War Zone to Express Solidarity Constanza Vieira BOGOTA, Jul 25 (IPS) - A caravan of around 1,250 indigenous and afro-Colombian women and women's rights activists drove Saturday into an area of southwestern Colombia that is caught up in fighting between leftist guerrillas and the army, for a "Visit to the Family". Under this Nasa Indian tradition, the broader community accompanies families who are experiencing hard times. The Nasa (also known as Paez) Indians who live in the southwestern region of Cauca account for 300,000 of the estimated one million indigenous people in this country of 44 million. They are the second largest of Colombia's 90 indigenous groups. In mid-April, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) the biggest rebel group - attacked the police station in the town of Toribío, which is located in Nasa territory in the Andes mountains. Since then, the Nasa Indians in that region have been caught in the crossfire between the leftist insurgents and the military. The Visit to the Family caravan was organised by the Women's Coordinating Committee of the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca (CRIC), the leading indigenous organisation in Colombia. CRIC has its own political party, the Indigenous Social Alliance, which holds seats in Congress. Co-organisers of the event were the Women's Peace Route, which represents 300,000 women and won the Millennium Peace Prize for Women in 2001, awarded by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and International Alert, a UK-based conflict resolution group. In keeping with the ageold Nasa tradition of accompanying those in trouble, the Women's Peace Route, which was created in 1996, has driven in caravans into combat zones several times to express solidarity with the local civilian populations suffering the effects of Colombia's four-decade armed conflict. The Nasa people are demanding respect for their right to remain neutral in the civil war, while insisting that all combatants - whether leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, or the army - pull out of their territory. But their struggle to remain neutral has put them in the sights of the security forces as well as the insurgents. In addition, since the FARC rebels attempted to drive the police out of Toribío, the presence of paramilitary fighters has been growing in the area. "We don't understand why they are here, nor what they are up to. They belong to the Calima Bloc, which supposedly demobilised around six months ago," Feliciano Valencia, human rights coordinator with the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), told IPS. Under the timetable agreed in ongoing negotiations between the paramilitaries and the government, the demobilisation of the extreme right-wing groups is to be completed by December. In the past, the Nasa people staged numerous occupations of property belonging to large landholders, laying claim to it as their ancestral territory. "In this territory we recovered around 100 estates amounting to more than 300,000 hectares of land, and we thus forced the government to carry out agrarian reform," said Ezequiel Vitonás, an elder councillor in ACIN, which is a regional branch of CRIC. But the struggle over land has led to "the murder of more than 500 leaders - killings that were financed by landowners," said Vitonás. Furthermore, since 1999, three high-level Nasa leaders were killed by FARC and two others were murdered by the army. ACIN's "Proyecto Nasa" or "Life Plan", a local development initiative, has received national and international prizes. Over the past two years, the indigenous councils making up ACIN had been training in civil resistance, in case the fighting reached Nasa territory. A total of 64 shelters were designated for people displaced by the violence, and now that fighting has broken out in the area, each family knows which refuge they are to flee to in case of emergency. In a message to "all of the armed actors," the Women's Peace Route activists and other women taking part in the caravan demanded "the demilitarisation of civilian life and the local territory, in order to guarantee the autonomy of the communities whose ancestors have always lived here." They said the government must "remove the police from the towns" and keep the armed forces from occupying community installations. The demonstrators also urged FARC not to recruit minors or plant land mines in the indigenous reserves, and called on both sides in the conflict not to destroy Nasa property. The Visit to the Family was "an act of symbolic reparations for the territory and its local residents...an expression of peaceful resistance to demand that the combatants leave," the women added. The demonstrators were escorted by 400 members of the Nasa indigenous guard, who are armed only with decorated staffs representing their authority. The indigenous guard, made up of 10,000 young male and female members, was awarded the National Peace Prize in 2004. Valencia said the caravan was closely searched at a military checkpoint on the way to Toribío. In Toribío, one of the main Nasa towns, the indigenous councils informed the women of conditions in the area. "Local women denounced arbitrary acts by the security forces at checkpoints, and complained about the soldiers' insistence on involving local residents in the conflict, investigating them and asking tendentious questions," said Valencia. "Thirty-three women have been sexually harassed or raped over the past three months in (the indigenous reserves of) Toribío, Jambaló and Caldono, since the conflict began to escalate," Alejandra Miller, with the Women's Peace Route, told IPS. An Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rapporteur was given taped testimony from women in Tacueyó who described "how soldiers demanded that they take their clothes off and then touched their breasts," she said. This also happened to two girls aged 13 and 17 who filed a complaint, which also went to the rapporteur, added Miller. In the caravan, Nasa women were joined by delegations of Wayúu, Kankuama, U'wa, Uitota, Tikuna and Pijao indigenous women. "There was an uncomfortable situation in Toribío because the police insisted on asking who had organised the march and why attacks had been mounted against the security forces," said Miller. "The indigenous women say the full moon gives them strength and protection, which is why the Visit was held at that time," she said. (END/2005) ***************************** TSUNAMI-IMPACT:Acehnese Women Rediscover Role in Society Fabio Scarpello JAKARTA, Jul 26 (IPS) - Women once ruled the defunct Sultanate of Aceh whose history speaks of women admirals and matriliny. But after the principality merged into a larger Indonesia in 1949, women became marginalised and it took a devastating tsunami for them to rediscover their traditionally dominant role in Acehnese society. ''The tsunami has changed Aceh's social and political landscape and it is time for women to return to playing a bigger role in society,'' said Arabiyani who works for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)s Aceh Project. Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island, suffered the brunt of the Dec. 26 tsunami. When the waters withdrew, over 130,000 people were left dead and most of the region was reduced to a rubble. According to Oxfam, in some villages the undersea earthquake, and the tsunami it triggered, killed up to four times as many women as men. The catastrophe forced President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to open the door to foreign help. Aceh - the theatre of a 30-year-long war had been sealed off to keep the judgmental eyes of the world for over two years of brutal suppression. . Women raped, tortured, killed or widowed took the brunt of the conflict that has left over 15,000 people dead. Yet, women were also at the forefront of survival strategies that sustained their families and communities through the conflict. The tsunami brought the world media to Aceh and the spotlight resulted in international pressure on both Jakarta and the rebel group, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to end the civil war. The opportunity was seized by President Yudhoyono who gave the green light for new peace talks in Helsinki. At the end of the fifth round of the talks, mediated by former Finnish president Maarti Ahtisaari, the two warring parties agreed to stop the hostilities and a formal peace deal is scheduled to be signed on Aug. 15. It is a new dawn in Aceh but it is going to be a long time before women can reclaim anything like the pivotal role they historically played in the province. Seafaring Arab traders who brought Islam to the Indonesian archipelago recorded that the Acehnese were a matrilineal people and that in Acehnese society women played prominent roles in politics and society. Even after embracing Islam, the sultanate boasted a succession of female rulers and Aceh even had a woman admiral Laksamana Koemalahayati heading the royal navy in the late 15th century. During the colonial period , women guerilla leaders like Cut Nya' Dhien,Cut Meutia, Pocut Baren and Pocut Mirah Inteun fought and resisted Dutch designs on the province between 1871 and 1901. Womens roles declined only after Indonesia gained independence and the new republic steamrollered over hundreds distinct ethnic identities in the vast archipelago. In Aceh, the matrilineal system crumbled away before a male-dominated political and religious elite. ''There is a glass ceiling. It is clear that at the grassroots level, women have a role. The problem is at the top. That is where they are put down,'' said Arabiyani. Nonetheless there are signs that the tide is turning. More than 70 percent of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in Aceh are either women's groups, or groups which mainly employ women. Post-tsunami, women took a leading role. They looked after the children and the injured and took part in search and rescue operations. They also made up the bulk of the staff employed by in the international organisations that swarmed over the area with help. And now the women have begun to ask for more. Some 400 women from across the province flocked to Banda Aceh for the second Acehnese Women's Conference on Jun. 16. The first conference was held in 2000. During the four-day event, women demanded a voice in the reconstruction phase and in the future of the province. ''Women are at the centre of the families. They are the ones that can best help to restore the social fabric of society and they must have a bigger role in how to do this,'' said Arabiyani. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, director of the Aceh Reconstruction Agency, agrees. ''I am convinced that it is women who will bring about change,'' he was quoted as saying soon after the conference. Earlier, on Jun. 10, women academics, lawyers, activists and students marched to the Aceh Provincial Legislative Council asking for a revision of the law that regulates the election of the head of the regional government. As it stands, Article 41 of the law reads that candidates must be ''able to administer Islamic law, able to read the holy Quran and able to become a leader of communal prayer and preacher at a mosque''. Aceh is the only Indonesian province under Islamic Sharia Law which prohibits women from becoming leaders of communal prayer or preachers, effectively barring them from running for electoral office. Aceh is due to hold a regional election in April 2006 but political representation is still a secondary concern for women in the villages and in the provinces hinterland. Dedik Harianty, head of the local NGO, Perampuan Merdeka (Women's Freedom), said that human rights abuses, domestic violence and the right to study are the most pressing problems of the majority of women in the villages. ''We do not talk about politics. We talk about womens daily issues. We try to build their confidence so that they can one day speak out about their rights,'' said the soft-spoken activist. Founded in 2000, Perampuan Merdeka has had a difficult time in Aceh as result of the civil strife. The organisations office was first raided and closed by the Indonesian Military (TNI) in July 2003. The NGO regrouped elsewhere, but the TNI came back with a vengeance. On Aug. 26, 2004 the office was closed again and this time three of the groups leaders - Krisna, Irma and Samsidar were arrested. Acehs post-tsunami scenario has been instrumental for the NGOs return in March 2005. ''We have used the tsunami-related problem to reach the people. Now we have more courage as the situation has changed,'' said Harianty, adding that the tsunami has brought in many journalists, and so the issue of human rights abuse is now out in the open. Rina, 24, is one of the young women who joined Perampuan Merdeka soon after the NGO restarted its mission. ''I really had no idea about women's rights. I am not saying that now I know it all, but for sure, I know it better and there is no turning back,'' she said. (END/2005) ***************************** ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE:Maori 'Marae' Integral to New Zealand Tourism Neena Bhandari HAWKE'S BAY, Jul 9 (IPS) - Atop the Te Mata peak, in freezing 6C weather, visitors to New Zealand are treated to a traditional 'Powhiri' or Maori welcome ceremony. The traditions and protocol of the Powhiri, which means venturing into the unknown and sharing information and knowledge, provide an insight into the unique and spiritual world of New Zealand's indigenous people. The welcome ceremony is very important for us as it is the protocol for establishing a new relationship and renewing relationship with all the five senses -- sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, says Lilian Hetet-Owen of Maori Treasures, near Wellington. More than 130 years ago the 'Tangata Whenua', or the original Maori people of the land, began guiding visitors to the snow-capped peaks, the lush green undulating terrain, crystal-clear rivers and geothermal hot spots of this land. Today a new generation of Maori are leading over 2.3 million overseas travellers through 'Aotearoa' or the Land of the Long White Cloud, the Maori name for New Zealand, as forest, rafting and fishing guides, entertainers and artists, hosts of 'Marae' (meeting places) and transportation operators. Elders Tony Mako and Tom Mulligan complete the Powhiri ceremony with a 'hongi' or pressing of noses, an acknowledgement that the two people share the same air, and touching foreheads, to signify they share the same knowledge. From this moment a visitor becomes 'Tangata Whenua' and enjoys the rights and obligations that go with the status. Since 2000, when the New Zealand Tourism Board launched its 10-year strategy to put a Maori component into tourism, an increasing numbers of Maori regional tourism groups and operators are exploiting the demand for authentic traditional cultural products and services. Marae is still the main focus of the Maori community. Besides, organising health clinics, genealogy meetings and providing education and aged care here, we are using (meeting places) to tell visitors our stories, says Tom Mulligan, chairperson of Te Taiwhenua O Heretaunga Trust, a conglomeration of 17 Marae with 16,000 people. Having tourists on the Marae helps create understanding of our culture and environment and at the same time it is proving economically beneficial for our community, he adds. Visitors and locals are welcomed separately. The locals enter from the left door, visitors from the right. Shoes are taken off outside, as entering the Marae symbolises entering the bosom of Maori ancestors. A Marae is painted mostly in red, black and white, but spread over five acres the Matahiwi Marae, one of the oldest in the region, is green, depicting growth. Its carvings record the stories of the mythical chief Maui, his family and their values, which are still followed today.. We are encouraging visitors as tourism has been a catalyst in preserving our culture and engendering a sense of pride in young Maori, who are learning history, legends, language, music and arts, says Mulligan. Until 1980, Maori children could not speak their mother tongue in school for fear of being punished. Today, visitors find integration of Maori words in the English language, creating a uniquely New Zealand English. A national Maori television channel was launched 18 months ago. The essence of traditional Maori stories is manifested even in contemporary art, as carver and musician Darren Ward demonstrated to a keen group of tourists, explaining various kinds of wood instruments, their sounds and uses at celebrations and ceremonies to mark child birth, marriage, funerals and other events. An instrument made of Kauri wood was played on the stomach of an expectant mother, its vibrations said to relax the child and mother. Where there is artistic excellence, there is human dignity. Some instruments can be played in three different ways and have a complex methodology, said Ward. According to the 2001 census, one in seven New Zealanders are Maori, meaning the indigenous people make up 15 per cent of the country's population of four million people. In the past decade, Maori numbers have grown by 21 per cent. That growth might be the reason for an increasing debate on renaming the Queen's birthday weekend as 'Matariki' or the Maori New Year holiday, as both fall in late May-early June. To early Maori the group of seven stars, Pleiades, was known as Matariki,and their appearance in the southern hemisphere signalled the New Year.The Maori also looked to the stars to calculate time, seasons and navigate oceans. Traditionally, Matariki was a time to pause, reflect and give thanks as the natural world regenerated. It also heralded another season and was marked with ritual singing and feasting. The gathered families and tribes also weaved, carved and prepared food. These seven stars are beyond cultural boundaries and have significance in many other cultures around the world. (Celebrating the Maori new year) brings together the two cultures -- 'Pakeha' (European settlers) and Maori, which are sometimes divisive, according to Gary Sparks, director of the Hawke's Bay Hold Planetarium in Napier. The revival of Matariki traditions reflects a more general renaissance in Maori culture, with tourism being used to preserve and promote the culture and create a more prosperous future for the Maori, their 'whanau' (family), and 'iwi' (tribes). The first renaissance began in the 1930s, when a doctor and parliamentarian introduced Maori arts and culture legislation to retain tradition. Since the 1970s, there is pride and something positive about being a Maori. There are even parallel Maori universities now, explains Hetet-Owen. Music and dance, a vital part of Maori culture, are a big attraction for tourists. The well-known Maori 'haka' is a fierce dance-chant that has become internationally recognised among sports fans who follow New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks. All Maoris are musically inclined and are making the most of this new found recognition of their talent, says violin virtuoso Elena of the Ngati Kahununu tribe, who has been playing the violin since she was seven years old, thanks to her Dutch stepfather's encouragement. However, she says that during her childhood she was ostracised by Maoris for playing a European instrument and rejected by Europeans for being a Maori. Groups like the Maori Dance Theatre of New Zealand, set up in 1983 to gain self-determination through cultural development, are now touring and performing the world over. As Te Rangi Huata, projects manager of the theatre, says, We will be taking a group to perform at various schools in India later this year. Both on New Zealand's north and south islands, Maori cultural tourism is gaining momentum. Through tourism and other progressive policies, we are making sure Maori get into mainstream statistics, declares Lawrence Yule, mayor of Hastings, who predicts that within 30 years, 50 per cent of New Zealanders will have Maori blood as a result of cross marriages. (END/2005) ****************************** COLOMBIA:Indigenous Women Help Preserve Biodiversity Constanza Vieira BOGOTA, Jul 4 (IPS) - Indigenous people in Colombia's Amazon jungle region use a garden for just two or three years before abandoning it to clear a new one somewhere else, thus practising sustainable agriculture in an exuberant but fragile environment where the soil is extremely poor. This was explained by Rufina Román, the daughter of a shaman - traditional healer and priest - of the Uitota-Nipode indigenous community, who for the first time spoke in public about some of the secrets she learned from her mother, the shaman's wife. Her audience included women from the Guambiano, Arhuaco, Kokama, Waunan,Bará and Wayúu ethnic groups from different parts of Colombia, where indigenous people belonging to 90 different ethnic groups make up one million of a total population of 44 million. Five years ago when she was studying in Bogotá, Román, who was 23 years old at the time, told IPS that she had decided to return to the jungles of southern Colombia to learn from her mother the wisdom shared by indigenous women. Araracuara, on the middle stretch of the Caquetá river, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon river, is the traditional home of the Nipode clan of the Uitoto people. Román felt a strong call to keep the generation-to-generation transmission of indigenous knowledge alive. That's when I started learning, she now told IPS with a smile, although she pointed out that only the preservers of culture, shamans like her father, are familiar with the code of life. Before that, Román had been at school in the capital. She thought that when she returned home, she would be able to teach her community many things. I thought I would sow there what I had acquired here. But they rejected what I brought back with me. She used a large coloured pencil drawing on construction paper of a woman's body dotted with plants and fruit as an illustration during her presentation at the international conference on indigenous women and biodiversity, held the last week of June in Bogotá. The event was organised by the Fundación Natura, the governmental Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). It was also attended by women of the Ashaninka people of Perú, the Mapuches of Chile and the Kuna of Panama. Román explained that each plant had its corresponding place in the body of the woman in the drawing, who symbolised the chagra or traditional garden covering one or two hectares cleared out of the forest by indigenous peoples in the Amazon to grow their food and medicinal and spiritual herbs. The sacred plants of coca and tobacco are at the woman's head, and drawn across her waist are people bringing in the harvest. The work on the chagra gives order to human life, said Román. The majority of indigenous families in the Amazon jungle region live today in bohíos or wooden, palm-thatched huts with dirt floors in small isolated villages located in the large indigenous reserves. The chagras are even deeper into the jungle, sometimes as far as a two-hour walk away. Studies show that communities only return to their old plots three generations later, when the jungle has completely grown back and recovered. The chagra sustains the pollen of life of the primary forest, in Román's words. In this manner, indigenous people avoid depleting the soil in the jungle, where the land cannot withstand continuous farming. The soil turns tough as leather, say the people of the jungle. But due to this semi-nomadic lifestyle based on ancestral knowledge of their surroundings, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon need large territories in which to move about. The spacious wooden hut where Román's parents live is on the banks of the powerful Caquetá river, at the point where it narrows to pass between two imposing rock walls, forming the Araracuara rapids. Across the river is the Predio Putumayo, a 6.5 million hectare indigenous reserve, located in one of the regions of greatest biological diversity in the world. The reservation is shared by seven ethnic groups, comprised of a total of 14,000 people. Román's mother taught her that we must plant for the animals, because we hurt their forest. We must replace everything that we cut down. Indigenous women thus grow more than the community will consume, based on the idea that the ants, for example, have a right to devour part of the harvest. The secret of receiving wisdom and keeping it alive is contained in the work on the chagra, Román told the participants in the seminar. Each plant sown has a live spirit, and represents food, healing, education, song, rites, marriage and baptism. The chagra is where knowledge takes material form. This means food is sacred and transforms our thinking and our hearts, and educates the human being, she added. She also said that The wise man may have all of the knowledge, but if he doesn't have a wife, he doesn't know anything, because according to tradition it is women who help men's words flourish and come alive, and ensure that knowledge is not lost but is passed from generation to generation. But Román and her mother are also aware of what is occurring around them in this civil war-torn country. We know that there are national politics and international politics and interests, and that all of the sights are now trained on the Amazon jungle region. That a lot of stealthy stuff is going on with respect to indigenous knowledge, and that there is biopiracy and oil prospecting in some parts of the jungle, she said. These are strange issues for us, Román added. I am not an academic, and I don't know about these things. But now, what I'm learning from my grandmothers and grandfathers is for me the best university, and I will never speak in the language of another people, because it is another way of thinking. I live there with them, I suffer with them, I talk to them, I chew (sacred coca) with them, and right now I am happy because I can come out with this strength, with this staff of knowledge which, as I was taught, allows us to manage the two principles, to understand good and evil in-depth, in order to live in harmony and equilibrium with oneself and with one's surroundings. Today, anyone can have a chagra. But if the work code that is written in the law of creation is not put into practice, the human being's spirit will not be sustained, and it will only sustain the material part, providing food, but not nourishment, said Román. That is why we say we are the essence of everything we plant in the chagra. The conference participants decided to create a network for indigenous women to maintain contact among themselves and with white women as well - the women who organised the event: well-known environmental activists, anthropologists and indigenous rights activists who promote a gender perspective. Anthropologist Astrid Ulloa, with ICANH, described the gathering as successful. (END/2005) **************************** DEVELOPMENT: Indigenous People Want Power to Veto World Bank Plans Haider Rizvi UNITED NATIONS, May 31 (IPS) - Indigenous groups are demanding that the World Bank seek their consent -- not just consult them -- before carrying out development programmes on their ancestral lands. Representatives of native communities came away from U.N.-sponsored talks here that ended last Friday criticising the global lender for, in their view, making cosmetic changes in its development policies, which they said continue to undermine native interests. Canadian aboriginal activist Arthur Manual summarised the concern bluntly. ''Consultation sounds good, but does nothing,'' he said. ''It's a mechanism to allow for the ultimate theft of our indigenous propriety interests free of charge. Prior informed consent is recognition of our land, culture, and way of life. By seeking to negotiate with groups within a given indigenous community under the rubric of consultation, rather than simply submitting plans for each community to discuss and decide upon internally, the bank would be ''dividing our communities, added Nilo Cayuqueo of Abya Yala Nexus, an indigenous group based in California. They referred to the bank's new policy on indigenous peoples' development introduced earlier this month. The bank capped seven yeas of consultations with indigenous communities, experts, and government officials when it unveiled its new policy, which it said calls for free, prior, and informed consultations with communities. But indigenous leaders, in comments at the conference's end and in interviews with IPS on Tuesday, said they were demanding that the bank recognise their communities' rights to their ancestral territories and natural resources. The correct terminology for us is free, prior, and informed consent, said Michael Dodson, an aboriginal activist from Australia. To him and other activists, consent has entirely different meanings than consultations. ''Of course, implicit in the term is the right to say no to development or to projects, he added. The bank said the revised policy was aimed at preventing community dissatisfaction with development efforts in the first place. We moved toward a pro-active approach and a strategic shift, a bank spokesman told IPS on condition he not be named. According to this revised policy, the bank will provide development financing only when a process of free, prior, and informed consultation results in broad community support. For activists, however, the new policy remains too vague. The only safeguard in the bank's approach is the need, they say, for broad community support, said Dodson. But what broad community support means is not defined in the policy. Does that mean 51 percent? Is that broad community support? Or is it 70 percent? It's because of this sort of uncertainty that we want the bank to abandon this policy of consultation. The new bank policy is set to take effect in July. The agency finances more than 230 projects involving indigenous peoples, and it expects to finance nearly 100 more by fiscal year 2008. Most of the world's 370 million indigenous people, both in rich and poor countries, live in abject poverty, according to the United Nations. The bank's new policy is in alignment with the decisions taken at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,'' according to the bank spokesman. The permanent forum is a body of 16 representatives, half of them nominated by indigenous organisations and half by U.N. member states. It meets annually to examine indigenous issues and report its recommendations to the U.N. Economic and Social Council. At the end of its three-week meeting, the Forum adopted a set of recommendations stressing the need to develop awareness and sensitivity on all indigenous issues and concerns and to empower communities. In addition to the World Bank's role, activists also voiced their concern over how governments would interpret the concept of consultations with the indigenous communities. The governments are not talking about it, said Nina Pacari, an indigenous activist from the Andean region. They are not talking about how the process of consultations are going to directly and seriously affect the people. Citing the example of Plan Colombia, the militarised programme to eradicate narcotic crops in the Latin American country, she said the government had taken steps to deal with what it called illicit crops but by so doing it failed to take into account the needs of indigenous people. In most cases, they have been forced to leave their territories,'' said Pacari. (END/2005) Culled out from InterPress Service News Agency ************************* Clint Bangaan Information Officer Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education) Tel: 6374 444 7703 Telefax: 6374 443 9459 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] =========+========= FEEDBACK? http://nativenewsonline.org/Guestbook/guestbook.cgi GIVE FOOD: THE HUNGERSITE http://www.thehungersite.com/ Reprinted under Fair Use http://nativenewsonline.org/fairuse.htm =========+========= Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Native News Online a Service of Barefoot Connection Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nat-International/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
