And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: "John Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Instant Report on Permanent Forum at ONU Geneva Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 11:45:18 PST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain Hello all. This is not a standard summary: I hope to send the Wednesday summary later tonight my time,and Thursday's report should come late in the day tomorrow. I just wanted to quickly apprise everyone of some new developments within the PF Working Group and some ancilliary networking that has taken place. First, today (Thursday) was a much more contentious day than any of the other meetings. We have not moved back to Salle XVII because supposedly there was some damage done, and the Chair wanted to preserve what he saw as a spirit of cooperation in Salle XII. But there are still great problems of translation, and given the Chair's practice of issuing conference room papers, there have been complaints from non-English speaking delegations (both states and indigenous peoples) about their inability to adequately analyze these documents for comment, and there is even less being done about the problems of translating concepts (one French speaker pointed out today that the word for "forum" in French can also mean a folkloric celebration, a rather ironic name for such a serious thing as a Permanent Forum). This led to long discussions that detracted from other issues, including a "nameplates down" debate on technical matters and the question of the WGIP's relation to the Permanent Forum. I'll send more info on this later, but for now I'll say that many states said they would not support both institutions, and that to raise money for the PF, the WGIP would have to go. Denmark was once again the indigenous peoples' strongest supporter, stating unequivocally that the WGIP's fate should not be linked to the PF, and that if any group should decide the WGIP's fate, it should be a fully-constituted PF. I'll try to get a breakdown of state positions out, perhaps early next week after the summaries are complete. More importantly, the afternoon session was supposed to be focused on pre-drafting debate of the CRPs,which are being combined into an annex to the full working group report. Over lunch the Chair met with the states to discuss the CRPs (he did this with the indigenous caucus the evening before), and they ran over-time. It was obvious that state delegates had a lot to say about the shaping of the final report. This came out even more clearly when the afternoon session started. Upon our return from lunch, the Chair presented a document called CRP4, which was basically a first draft of parts of the final report (the narrative part is written by the Secretariat). It caused a huge stir, despite the Chair's concerted efforts to explain that it was not binding. After reading the heading aloud, the chair broke the meeting until sufficient copies could be distributed for further comment. There was more confusion due to the fact that there were actually 2 CRPs, and that translations were also making the reading harder. The indigenous caucus then met,and upon returning to the meeting about 20 minutes later the caucus proposed a re-wording of the heading that would remove what many delegates saw as a negative slant that came from the pressure of the most stubborn states, India and the U.S. Denmark immediately approved it, but India stepped in and started asking procedural questions about the Working Group's mandate and powers. Canada, Norway, and Russia came out with Denmark in solid support of this new wording, but India continued to enact procedural blocking, with the US basically saying it would not support the new wording and suggesting that the Chair make it his own perspective. Eventually Brazil and Argentina blocked further procedural wrangling on the heading, but then India, the UK, and the US began stalling or going off-topic. In particular, the US came out against Norway's attempts at mediation and formally requested that the Chair remove the "s" from "indigenous peoples" since this was a legal term that could not be applied to indigenous peoples. After bending over backwards to accommodate India and the US, the Chair suspended the meeting. Where that leaves us for tomorrow is anyone's guess. It is hoped that some dialogue can be resumed, but given the fear response that a number of countries have demonstrated, it's hard to tell how the actual drafting of the report will proceed. The indigenous delegates are preparing for a hard day, although given the strong support of some of the Nordic countries and Canada, it is hoped that a broad coalition of support for the Chair can be mustered to move the process forward and create a useful report and set of ideas for March's Commission on Human Rights meeting, where formal decisions will be made on the future of the Permanent Forum process. John Stevens Geneva 18/2/99 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
