By Mabinty M. Kamara
As they joined the world in commemorating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Mano River Union Civil Society Natural Resources Rights and Governance Platform (MRU CSO) has in a press statement called for a concerted approach in advancing the pressing need for a new social contract geared toward combating the legacy of exclusion and marginalization.
“Indigenous peoples everywhere must be included in critical decision making and development outcomes in relation to their lives and resources,” the statement reads.
9th of August was set aside as the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1994 to mark the date of the inaugural session of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations at the United Nations in 1982.
This year’s commemoration is being held on the theme, “Leaving No One Behind: Indigenous Peoples and the Call for a New Social Contract.” This aims at promoting discussions on the need to rethink a new agreement of common sense, based on genuine and inclusive participation and partnerships that fosters equal opportunities, respects the rights, dignity, and freedoms of all.
However, the pressure group believes that a new social contract framework geared toward cooperation, economic benefits and power-sharing must be at the heart of the development agenda in every country where indigenous people continue to be dispossessed of their livelihoods, while their cultures and languages are routinely vilified, in addition to being excluded from socio-economic, political, and environmental governance activities.
“We deplore the systematic violence, reprisal attacks, and killings of indigenous peoples in West Africa, who are being dislodged from their ancestral lands by the combined forces of multinational corporations and their host governments,” the statement quoted Michel Yoboue, Chairman of the Platform.
It added: “These gross human rights violations are perpetrated with the full knowledge of the home governments of these powerful corporations in the name of foreign direct investment in poor countries and must share collective responsibility for the crimes committed against the locals.”
According to the statement, over 476 (four hundred and seventy-six) million indigenous people are documented to be living in 90 countries across the world, thereby constituting 6.2 percent of the world’s population. Indigenous people, according to the United Nations, thus continue to suffer disproportionally from multiple confronting issues such as poverty, diseases, discrimination, institutional instability and financial insecurity.
“As a network of frontline grassroots environmental, land, and human rights defenders, comprising of indigenous, urban slums and communities affected by the operations of multinational corporations, the MRU CSO Platform has witnessed firsthand how the dignity and protection of natives are being sacrificed at the altar of so-called investments,” it stated.
It added that the situation in West Africa is particularly concerning considering persistent struggles for rights and resources involving indigenous peoples and successive postcolonial governmental authorities along with their extractive capitalist multinational entrepreneurs.
To have this on record, narrate their stories, and proffer possible solutions to the problems faced by Indigenous people in their communities, the group noted that it has on the 23rd July 2021, launched a pilot project in nine West African countries to document and report attacks, reprisals, and killings of grassroots defenders whose plight have been underreported, and sometimes failed to make the headlines in the media.
The MRU CSO Platform is a network of environmental, land, and human rights defenders. It also includes indigenous, urban slums and communities affected by the operations of multinational corporations. Its membership is drawn from nine of the fifteen countries in West Africa namely: Liberia, Sierra Leone, La Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, and Senegal.
Copyright © Politico Online (16/08/21)
