UNPO Celebrates Earth Day 2007

Saturday 21 April 2007 - 9 am until 6 pm

Grote Marktstraat, The Hague

UNPO Press Release, 19 April 2007 - Local communities have a right to the land and resources that have sustained them for centuries, and the right to a voice when decisions which affect them are made. All too frequently these rights are ignored and these voices lost when economic interests come to the fore. UNPO hopes to make Earth Day 2007 an opportunity to raise these voices and highlight the sometimes forgotten local costs of environmental degradation and destruction.

Preserving the environment is not simply a matter of conserving resources. Our environment is what sustains our communities, their individual members, and their traditional ways of life. Our use of resources such as water, timber, and oil, all have an impact upon the communities living where they are extracted from, which often suffering disproportionately from the costs of this process. Preserving the environment is consequently closely tied to the challenge of preserving communities and their ways of life. 

The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is a democratic, international membership organization based in The Hague, the Netherlands, representing nearly 70 Member groups and 200 million people worldwide. Its Members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and occupied or unrecognised states, who have joined together to protect their human and cultural rights, to find non-violent solutions to conflicts which affect them, and to preserve their environments.

Minorities and indigenous populations are frequently excluded from the international fora mandated to protect their rights, as well as the decision making processes which seek to balance the economic benefits of resource exploitation against its environmental costs. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to large scale environmental degradation which can threaten the resources that have sustained their communities for centuries, their traditional ways of life, and ultimately their existence as an identifiable nation or people.

Ethnic and religious minorities in Iran and Burma have seen their rivers diverted to nourish other parts of the country as water has become increasingly scarce; indigenous populations in Nigeria and Angola, such as the Ogoni and the Enclave of Cabinda, have found themselves suffering the effects of pollution from a poorly managed oil industry whilst seeing little of its proceeds; and indigenous communities in Acheh and West Papua have seen their traditional forests disappear as fuel for economic growth elsewhere.  

Earth Day is an annual celebration aiming to raise awareness of some of the most pressing environmental issues across the globe. UNPO and its Members will mark the day on 21 April 2007 in The Hague city centre, where a festive and colourful stand on Grote Marktstraat will lend a human face to the cause for greater environmental protection and increased consultation with affected local communities. The event will include a photo-exhibition, and activities and competitions for the younger generation, accompanied by traditional dances and cultural performances led by UNPO Members from South Moluccas and Southern Cameroons.

Representatives of other UNPO Members will also be on hand to provide first-hand accounts of the environmental challenges faced by their respective communities, as UNPO aims to make the most of this opportunity to inform the Dutch public and international community about the local effects environmental degradation and its ties to the resources we often take for granted.

On 19 April UNPO participated in a one-hour radio station show at a radio channel in The Hague, to discuss topics relevant to UNPO, inform about the organisation and its Members and to promote the upcoming Earth Day celebration. 

Click here for more about the radio show

- When Livelihoods are Cut Away (Deforestation)

- Landmines Recognise no Cease-Fire (Landmines)

- The Cure of Black Gold (Oil)

- Water: A Precious Commodity (Water)

For more information or queries please contact the UNPO Secretariat by telephone: +31(0)70 3646504 or by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it