A/76/162 degree of territorial and political autonomy and financial autonomy and support, and perhaps more importantly led to the adoption of a quota system to ensure that government departments in the region used both the German and Italian languages and that public job opportunities were allocated in strict proportion to the percentage in the population of the German minority, the Italian community and a small local minority known as the Ladin. 71. In Papua New Guinea, the development of the world’s largest copper mine on Bougainville Island from the 1960s was a vital pillar of that country’s economic development, at one point contributing by itself more than 45 per cent of the country’s national export revenue. The development of the mine involved the expropriation and use of land and resources belonging to the indigenous minorities of Bougainville, and the vast majority of the thousands of workers recruited were migrant workers from other parts of Papua New Guinea – a pattern often associated with massive resourcebased development programmes in different parts of the world. At the risk of oversimplifying an evolving situation with various social and political elements, conflict began to emerge because many of the local landowners were not benefiting from the employment and financial benefits associated with the mine, and local indigenous minorities were increasingly concerned about adverse environmental effects, while almost all of the mine profits left the island. Tensions over decades finally led to violent conflict in the 1980s, with estimates of 15,000 –20,000 Bougainvilleans killed in the period 1988–1998 alone. Eventually the mine was closed, a form of autonomy was granted and recently the populatio n freely and unambiguously voted in favour of independence in a self-determination referendum. 72. The Niger Delta region of Nigeria saw tensions arise in the early 1990s over oil exploitation and with a number of local minorities, particularly the Ogoni and the Ijaw. Nigerian legislation empowered the federal Government to expropriate land for negligible compensation without consulting local populations to turn over to oil corporations, oil being the country’s main economic driver. Indeed, the oil i ndustry based in the fertile Niger River Delta produces over 90 per cent of the country’s total exports. Oil has for a long time figured as a totem in the development plans of Nigeria. The skilled, well-paid jobs were not occupied by minorities of the Niger Delta, and indeed the region has become poorer since the 1960s. The Ogoni and other local minorities were largely excluded from the benefits of this driver of the economy, which dilapidated the environment, leading to growing discontent and eventually violence in the 1990s. 73. There are only two regions of India where the country’s Muslim minority of more than 200 million people are able to exercise significant political authority through some form of territorial autonomy. The Muslim minority in the unio n territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep constitute more than 50 per cent of the population, with the former having a much higher level of autonomy with a parliamentary assembly able to adopt its own legislation. In August 2019, however, the national Government unilaterally revoked the region’s autonomy by abolishing article 370 of the Constitution of India, effectively dismissing the democratically elected government in place, and among other things removing legislation and other measures that protected the land ownership and employment guarantees that benefited Muslim and other minorities of Jammu and Kashmir, “to speed up development in the region”. 46 Similar to some of the steps taken in Jammu and Kashmir that have raised human rights concerns from special procedures mandate holders, 47 in Lakshadweep Union Territory the national Government’s 2020 appointed administrator has made __________________ 46 47 18/22 See www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/24/india-modi-meets-kashmir-leaders-for-first-time-sinceautonomy-revoked. Communication AL IND 21/2020 of 10 February 2021. 21-09902