INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S WATCH

Kankana-ey Heads UN IP Body

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a Kankana-ey from Mt. Province, makes history by being the first Filipino to head the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues based in New York.

By Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat 

BAGUIO CITY (May 19) — An Igorot woman made history when she was voted by consensus recently as chairperson of a 16-member United Nations body concerned with indigenous peoples’ issues.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a Kankana-ey from Besao, Mountain Province in northern Philippines and a resident of Baguio City will chair the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) for the next three years.

“I commit myself to do my best to carry out my duties so that the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) can help improve indigenous peoples’ lives around the world,” Tauli-Corpuz, said in her acceptance speech last May 16 in New York.

Established in July 2000 as an advisory body to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Permanent Forum is mandated to discuss indigenous issues relating to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education and human rights.

Specifically, the Forum provides expert advice and recommendation on indigenous issues to the ECOSOC, as well as to programs, funds and other UN agencies through the Council.

Since it was created, the Forum, says Tauli-Corpuz, has become a venue through which indigenous peoples’ representatives worldwide have ventilated their issues at the UN. The issues included the onslaught of mining, logging, big dams, piracy of biological resources in indigenous territories, and the insensitivity of the development policies of global institutions to indigenous peoples’ culture and basic human rights.

The Forum has also given indigenous peoples space through which they can exchange innovative ideas as they coordinate and synchronize their efforts in helping shape development policies and frameworks that affect their lives.

Worsening poverty

As the new chairperson of the UN Forum, Tauli-Corpuz vowed to help address the “worsening poverty, marginalization and gross violation of basic human rights” of indigenous peoples in both developing and developed countries.

On its fourth session from May 16-27, she urged the Forum to help ensure that the Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty by half in 2010 would be done “not at our expense,” referring to the world’s indigenous populations.

“Let us nurture (the Forum) further to become a home for indigenous peoples in the international

community,” said Tauli-Corpuz in her speech, which can be downloaded through the website of Tebtebba, the Baguio-based international policy and research center. “Let us continue to forge and shape the Permanent Forum as a symbol of hope for indigenous peoples.”  

Tauli is currently the executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation. She also worked with the Cordillera Women’s Education and Resource Center (CWERC) before she embarked on international IP concerns in the later half of the ‘90s. Maurice Malanes of Nordis / Bulatlat

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