Introduction to the Indigenous Peoples Violations Reporting System

Description
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is a “Declaration” not a law and so nobody is going to be arrested, tried in a Court of Law and receive a sentence for violating some provision in the Declaration. Nevertheless, there are many instances where Indigenous People and Tribes are not treated as equals in the Nations wherein they are Indigenous. Too often they are treated as second class Citizens and not afforded the basic rights and protections they deserve. With this in mind the Indigenous Reporting System has been developed to meet several needs as follows:

1) To help in stopping violence and death of Indigenous People by those that would hurt or kill Indigenous People for any number of reasons. These reasons could include the forceful eviction of Indigenous People from their native lands so that timber, can be taken, or minerals mined, or petroleum pumped from beneath Indigenous Lands. I t may be racially or religiously motivated, or simply the greed of the developer who sees the Indigenous lands as free for the taking. Reporting allows UNPFII and the Rapporteurs to focus public attention on a specific people and a specific region. Further, it gets factual information to the highest levels of Government where real change can begin.

2) Reporting is the only way to measure the impact of the Declaration on the lives of Indigenous people. This can be useful to assess how effective the information campaign to bring the knowledge of the Declaration to Governments, be they National, Regional, County, Local and City Governments. Reporting also tells us where UNPFII and its partners, the Indigenous Peoples Organizations, are doing a good job of educating the Governments and the People therein as to what is appropriate in working with Indigenous People