Fijian chiefs take concern to UN forum on indigenous issues

Transcript

Indigenous chiefs from Fiji are calling on UN experts and agencies to step in over international treaty breaches by the Fiji government.

The claims that indigenous people's group rights are being violated are contained in a submission signed by the paramount chiefs Ro Teimumu Kepa and Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu.

The submission and a petition are part of a presentation by Fiji NGOs at the 14th Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the UN's headquarters in New York taking place over the next fortnight.

Niko Nawaikula of the Fiji Native Tribal Congress told Sally Round it's following up on what has already been noted by several UN bodies in the past few years.

NIKO NAWAIKULA: There have been breaches of our group rights by the passing of these decrees and laws that terminated the Great Council of Chiefs, that take away our name that is our intellectual property, that nationalise the administration and the administration's use and management of native land and that removed the entrenched provision from our constitution that protected the group rights of indigenous people which included laws relating to native land and laws relating to the establishment of the Great Council of Chiefs. So we asserted that in 2012 and the outcome or the concluding observation of that (UN) Human Rights Committee is: yes, these constitute breaches of the permanent and inalienable rights which are recognised in the ILO C169 which Fiji ratified and all of which are reflected in the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Rights, by the fact that number one, those documents require as a right for indigenous groups to be first consulted and give their prior and informed consent before any change in any laws or policies that affect them  

SALLY ROUND: What can be done at this forum? In terms of what you are trying to achieve?

NN:  Well you know how it is with the UN, the UN is not able to do much, but we want to have the UN informed as well as the international community.  We want the UN to, at the very least, remind Fiji as a member state that it had, as every other nation, undertaken to respect and implement the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights and Fiji especially by ratifying ILO convention 169.  Since 2012, since the concerns were noted Fiji has not done anything but in fact has continued with its programme of what it calls mainstreaming to purposely remove the group rights of indigenous people. That's an aim of this regime to achieve what it calls equality.

SR:  So this is mainly to shine a spot light on what you feel are breaches by the Fiji government of indigenous rights?

NN: Correct, because you know, that's the most the UN can do and it's the same not only for Fiji, it's the same for any country.