See for example Sidsel Saugestad, ‘Beyond the “Columbus Context”: New Challenges as the Indigenous Discourse is Applied to Africa’, in Indigenous Peoples: Self-determination, Knowledge, Indigeneity, ed. Kathrin Wessendorf (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2008), 444.Įarly efforts to formalise IPACC started as early as 1994, but it was only in July 1997 that the African Caucus at the UNWGIP meeting adopted the founding constitution of IPACC. See IWGIA, The Indigenous World 2008, ed. Claudot-Hawad et Hawad, ed., Touaregs: Voix Solitaires sous l'Horizon confisqué, Ethnies-Documents (Paris: Peuples Autochtones et Développement, 1996), 20–1. A number of indigenous peoples are involved in court disputes over land tenure and land rights. The Tuareg movement is not calling for secession from any existing states, rather they are emphasising equity between agricultural and pastoralist territories in national governance and expenditures. None of the hunter-gatherers claim territorial sovereignty and only the Tuareg pastoralists are claiming administrative rights in their desert territories and have been involved in armed conflict with their national state authority. Approximately, there are over 40 hunter-gatherer peoples and 12 major pastoralist peoples making claims to indigenous peoples' status in their respective countries. Statistics on who is claiming to be indigenous are not available, in part because many of the peoples referred to here are not recognised by African census instruments.
Others lobbied inside Africa and in other forums.Įach of these terms from southern, eastern and central Africa respectively refer to hunter-gatherers by generic, somewhat pejorative national terms. IPACC's negotiation team for New York included Saoudata Aboubacrine (Burkina Faso), Vital Bambanze (Burundi), Hassan id Belkassm (Morocco), Mohamed Ewangaye (Niger), Leonard Fabrice Odambo (Gabon), Handaine Mohammed (Morocco), Kanyinke Sena (Kenya), Mary Simat (Kenya), and Adele Wildschut (IPACC Trust, South Africa). (2009), 252–62 and Albert Barume, ‘Responding to the Concerns of the African States’, in Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Document no. See the articles by Naomi Kipuri, ‘The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the African Context’, in C. See: United Nations, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007. Thirty-five African States voted in favour: thus 66 per cent of Africa voted in favour of UNDRIP in 2007. Three African states abstained from the vote and 15 states were not present during the vote. Canada and United States have indicated that reviews are underway. Since the vote, Australia and New Zealand have reversed their positions. The reactions of African diplomats provide an opportunity to examine Africa's relationship with its own legal and cultural traditions, its openness to pluralist forms of governance and non-state institutions in post-colonial regimes, as well as Africa's relationship with the international human rights system.ġ44 states in favour, four votes against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) and 11 abstentions (Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa and Ukraine). The emergence of an indigenous peoples' movement in Africa represents an evolution of civil society on the continent and the lobbying in favour of UNDRIP was a measure of its capacity. The author argues that success with UNDRIP was due to the effectiveness of the main African transnational indigenous peoples' network, though there were favourable conditions including a surge of idealism associated with African bloc politics at the United Nations, South Africa's democratisation and focus on human rights, a global awareness of the need for more effective human rights mechanisms for non-dominant peoples and an unwillingness by Africa to forsake the benefits and alliances of the international system. Indigenous peoples' activism with regards the UNDRIP was successful despite the challenges. This article examines the efforts of a transnational indigenous peoples' civil society network to convince African states to the support the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).