The Term ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Key For Identity, Rights, UN Experts Say

United Nations experts are underlining the importance of using the term “indigenous peoples” in a UN draft set of sustainable development goals from which they say the term has been deleted.

In a release posted on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on 18 July, the three experts: Dalee Sambo Dorough, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Albert Deterville, head of the five-strong Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz, new UN Special Rapporteur on indigenous peoples issues, alleged that all references to indigenous peoples have been deleted from the latest draft document.

The document was issued by an open-ended working group discussing sustainable development goals. The working group was established following the June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

The call from experts comes after a meeting of the working group in New York to draft a set of goals, to be presented to the UN General Assembly in September, according to the release.

“Using the term ‘indigenous and local communities’ undermines the gains achieved by indigenous peoples regarding their assertion of their distinct status and identity as peoples and the rights accorded to them under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international instruments,” the experts said in the release.

This issue is also recurrent at the World Intellectual Property Organization Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) (IPW, WIPO, 18 July 2013).