A/HRC/EMRIP/2019/2
a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World
Heritage Site. They have yet to receive justice.36
31.
In Thailand, the Government requested the listing of the Kaeng Krachen National
Park as a World Heritage park in 2013 without consulting the local indigenous Karen
peoples. The Karen have experienced forced evictions, destruction of housing and crops,
arrests and enforced disappearances (see A/71/229). On 12 June 2018, the Supreme
Administrative Court, in its final verdict in Red administrative case No. OS 4/2561,
determined that the acts of the government officials involved in the demolition and burning
of lands were unlawful.
32.
The Maasai pastoralists in the Loliondo Game Controlled Area have experienced
land conflicts, evictions and violence over the past few decades, resulting from
conservation and tourist development. In 2017, forcible evictions from legally registered
traditional lands are alleged to have continued.37 While the evictions were supposed to have
been halted in November 2017, their future remains uncertain. 38
33.
In Mexico, the Reserva de la Biosfera del Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río
Colorado (Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve),
established in 1993, which subsequently became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has
negatively affected the Cucapá peoples’ rights to access natural resources such as fishing. 39
34.
Some State policies on conservation help to avoid migration, such as that for the
Ramsar site (from the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as
Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar Convention)) in Brazil, which protects the waters and wetlands
of a number of indigenous lands and involved indigenous peoples. 40 An initiative known as
“mosaic” led to better coordination for the protection of indigenous land in North of Pará
and West of Amapá states.41
35.
Some indigenous peoples have successfully asserted their rights, as in the case of
Roy Sesana and Others v. the Attorney General, in Botswana. In 2006, the High Court held
that the indigenous people evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve had been
deprived of the lawful possession of their land. While that case was subsequently upheld by
the Court of Appeal, there have been concerns that the decision has been enforced in only a
very limited way (see A/HRC/24/41/Add.4, paras. 17–20).
36.
Sometimes the World Bank has withdrawn funding, as in the Water Tower
Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme in Kenya, after the
Bank concluded in its report that the Kenya Forest Service had neglected the customary
rights of the Sengwer and had applied a policy of evictions. Despite that and the withdrawal
of funding from the European Union, it is reported that forced evictions continue and that
the majority of the Sengwer now live in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. 42
4.
Militarization and conflict
37.
Displacement often results from militarization and conflict. Examples include the
migration of indigenous peoples from Myanmar to Thailand and from Central America
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Sixty-first ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, intersession
activity report, November 2017.
Edward Porokwa, “Tanzania”, in The Indigenous World 2018, Pamela Jacquelin-Andersen (ed.),
(International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, 2018) pp. 486 and 487.
A/HRC/15/37/Add.1; A/HRC/24/41/Add.4, paras. 152 and 153; Porokwa, “Tanzania”, in The
Indigenous World 2018, pp. 486 and 487.
Mexico submission.
www.mma.gov.br/informma/item/14770-noticia-acom-2018-05-2997.html.
www.institutoiepe.org.br/2013/01/governo-reconhece-primeiro-mosaico-que-inclui-terras-indigenas/.
A/HRC/31/59/Add.1; Amnesty International, “Families torn apart: forced eviction of indigenous
people in Embobut Forest, Kenya”, 15 May 2018, available at
www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR3283402018ENGLISH.PDF.
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