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Closing Statement of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity
at the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing
Convention on Biological Diversity, 22-26 October 2001 - Bonn, Germany
Madam Chair/Mr. Chairman,
The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity has been particularly concerned about ensuring the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity because it affects the lives of our peoples and our fundamental rights: the right to self-determination, the rights to our lands, territories, natural resources, livelihoods and control over our knowledge.
Although we recognize the progress made at the 5th Conference of the Parties, especially regarding the general principles of decision V/16, the delegations present in this Working Group do not even seem to be familiar with the contents of their own decisions. Further, we have observed a lack of political will among some of the Parties which would have been necessary to make meaningful progress in our work.
We wish to emphasize that the concept “stakeholders” is not applicable to indigenous peoples because we are “rights-holders”. Rights over our traditional knowledge and natural resources are collective rights which are inherent and inalienable to our peoples.
Once again we emphasize that the fundamental precondition for progress on the implementation of the Convention is the recognition of our existence and rights as indigenous peoples.
With regard to the discussions which took place within Sub-Working Group 1 concerning guidelines on Access and Benefit Sharing we maintain our position that at present the guidelines will not win the consent of indigenous peoples.
As we have repeatedly recommended, this reveals the need for capacity-building among the Parties with respect to the rights of indigenous peoples as established within existing and emerging international instruments and agreements.
In this respect we draw your attention to the fact that while the debates which have taken place under Sub-Working Group 2 have been regarded as a side-issue, in reality significant progress has been made.
On this basis we recommend that the most practical way forward would be to realise a series of activities drawing on case studies prepared by indigenous peoples in countries where the existence and rights of indigenous peoples are already recognised as a basis for formulating concrete recommendations to the Parties in the future.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with countries where the existence and rights of indigenous peoples are already recognised within national legislation, in accordance with international law, and countries which have adopted policies recognising indigenous peoples’ rights.
We further recommend that in order to ensure consistency in the development of the work of the Convention, other relevant UN bodies and specialized agencies should be invited to contribute to future work.
In order to assist with this process we reaffirm the fundamental importance of the recommendations that we presented on Monday in establishing the preconditions for any future progress and request that these basic recommendations, which we will now present to you, be annexed to the report of this meeting.
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