Over 1.000 representatives of indigenous peoples and communities from around the
World, along with Government delegates, non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies, are in Geneva from 19 to 23 July 2004 to participate in the largest international meeting on indigenous peoples' rights.

The gathering, the annual session of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous
Populations, gives indigenous communities an opportunity to increase international awareness of the state of their human rights and allows participants to discuss solutions to existing problems, including the setting of standards on specific issues like land or cultural rights. The theme of this year’s session, Indigenous peoples and conflict resolutions.

Participants are discussing, among other things, root sources of conflict between indigenous peoples on the one hand, and States, and non-indigenous entities and individuals on the other, including their differing views on who possesses valid title to land and resources located in territories traditionally occupied by indigenous groups. Another issue to be examined is the lack of respect for treaties, agreements and other arrangements between indigenous peoples and States, to the detriment of the indigenous party, which leads to conflict over identity, land title and resources.

On the opening day of the 22nd Session, the newly-elected High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, affirmed her commitment to the continuation of the Working Group, calling it the think-tank on indigenous issues.

She spoke extensively on the International Decade for the Rights of Indigenous People, begun in 1995 by the Commission on Human Rights. As the Decade draws to a close, several are dissatisfied with the progress made. One of its fundamental goals, the creation of a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples to be passed by the General Assembly as a legitimate instrument of international law, is far from being realized.

“I have been informed that to date the working group set up by the Commission [on Human Rights] has been able to adopt only 2 of the 45 articles at first reading,” the UN High Commission for Human Rights said. “That makes the implementation of the General Assembly's recommendation practically impossible.”

She expressed her thought that it would be too difficult and too time-consuming to lobby the General Assembly to pass the draft declaration as is, so the working group should accept concessions in the interest of meeting the 3 December 2004 deadline.

As a number of other key projects for the Decade have made slow progress, some government delegations, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Advisory Group for the Decade Fund and the Special Rapporteur on indigenous issues are calling for a second Decade.

Like several speakers of the day, a representative from the Tebtebba Foundation, Victoria Tauli Corpus, ended her statement with this appeal. “We strongly support the extension of the international decade into a second decade,” Corpus said.

Re-elected Chairman of the Working Group Miguel Alfonso Martinez voiced his disagreement with Arbour’s mention that a second decade could be replaced by alternative programming.

“The fact that we are speaking about alternatives is good,” he said. “Alternatives to the decade is not a decade. It could be education programs. A decade replaced by a program would be a poor replacement. We have to be extremely careful to say there are alternatives.”

With the majority of the WGIP participants, human rights expert Françoise Hampson shares a concern on the continuation of the WGIP by the UN.

“Surely, if they [the UN] would abolish this working group they should abolish the working groups on minority and women’s,” Hampson said. Importance of its continuation lies in its two-fold function: WGIP is a forum for discussing indigenous issues and an opportunity for drafting new international legal standards on human rights.

Five WGIP human rights experts are present this week.

In an agenda point devoted to general debate, all the participants were invited to update the working group on the current human rights situation affecting their communities. These statements comprised the remainder of the day’s activities.