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Canada: International Law supports Native Rights

The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development reaffirms its support for the rights of aboriginal peoples and, in particular, the rights to land and resources.

Montreal, 21 October, 1999 The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development reaffirms its support for the rights of aboriginal peoples and, in particular, the rights to land and resources.

"The recent Supreme Court ruling (Marshall case) on native fishing rights is consistent with United Nations treaties and with the findings of UN treaty bodies. It's a question of justice: Canada must honour its treaty obligations," said the President of the International Centre, Warren Allmand.

In a statement today, he called on the Canadian and provincial governments to take immediate steps to implement these rights in accordance with the reports from UN treaty bodies and the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP).

On April 7 of this year, the UN Human Rights Committee said it was "particularly concerned that Canada had not yet implemented the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples." The report stated that "without a greater share of lands and resources, institutions of aboriginal self-government will fail."

At the time, the UN committee recommended that decisive and urgent action be taken toward the full implementation of the RCAP recommendations on lands and resource allocations.

In December 1998, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also clearly stated there is a "direct connection between economic marginalization and the on-going dispossession of Canadian Aboriginal people from their lands, as recognized by the RCAP." It endorsed the recommendations of the RCAP that policies which violate aboriginal treaty obligations...should on no account, be pursued by Canada."

Mr. Allmand, who is in Geneva participating in the latest round of negotiations on the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is speaking up on these crucial issues of self-determination and treaty rights.

Article 26 of the Draft Declaration states that "Indigenous peoples have the right to own, develop, control and use the lands and territories, including the total environment of the lands, air, waters, coastal seas...and other resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used."

Article 27 states that "Indigenous peoples have the right to the restitution of the lands, territories, and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated...without their free and informed consent."

These same principles have been emphatically confirmed in the June 1999 Report of Miguel Alfonso Martinez, the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples for the UN Commission on Human Rights.

The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development is an independent and non-partisan Canadian institution with an international mandate, working with citizens and governments in Canada and abroad, to promote human rights and democratic development through dialogue, capacity building, advocacy and public education. It focuses on four themes: democratic development and justice, economic globalization and human rights, women's rights and indigenous peoples' rights principally in 12 core countries.