I speak on behalf of my organisation, the Indian Council of South America, CISA. The biggest conflict indigenous peoples face is with the States that have invaded them and the more minor ones arise because populations with conflicting visions and interests coexist on indigenous lands.

States resolve most of the conflicts that arise between them by appealing to a higher authority, such as the United Nations. Hence, as each State is recognized as having full sovereignty over its territory, when a conflict involving indigenous peoples arises, other States cannot intervene in what are deemed internal affairs nor can the United Nations do so unless there is a clear case of genocide. The bigger conflict between the invading State and the indigenous people is solved according to the jurisdiction and laws of the State which is at one and the same time the complainant, the judge and the beneficiary of the rulings handed down. For their part, International Organisations make recommendations calling for better treatment for indigenous peoples which States then fail to carry out.

For these reasons, the representatives of the indigenous peoples in the eighties, of which CISA was one, decided to set up a high level body within the United Nations, able to do research into indigenous conditions in the field and able to act and resolve their conflicts with States. For this purpose, a discussion group was set up, whose decisions were to be arrived at by consensus, to drive the "Permanent forum for indigenous peoples". After three annual discussions at which no consensus was reached, the governments submitted to the Commission on Human Rights a "Forum" with no research or conflict resolution capability, to deal with "indigenous issues" that other United Nations agencies already handle. Thus the possibility of conflict resolution being taken out of the jurisdiction of States was removed and most of the political groups who controlled the indigenous caucus in the nineties and up to 2000 just went along with this and kept their criticisms to themselves. Having squandered this opportunity, we are now worse off than we were in the eighties when we still had hope that there would be a "Forum" to act in conflict situations.

This is why CISA believes that we should resume the struggle to get a new super state body within the United Nations to carry out this task, and why we will not be content with venues where we can only complain and expose States who enslave our peoples while there is no higher United Nations body to intervene.

Indigenous delegates like ourselves opened up the way for this in the seventies and eighties ; those who followed squandered it. We can no longer live with this failure. The new generations must restart the process ; for this we appeal.

Thankyou very much

Nolasco MAMANI
Tomas CONDORI