Statement to the UNGA 78 – Third Committee
Agenda Item 68: Rights of indigenous peoples
New York, 9 October 2023
Mr. Chair,
The Holy See welcomes today’s discussion as an opportunity to reaffirm the dignity and rights of all Indigenous Peoples, together with the respect and protection of their cultures, languages, traditions and spirituality. It is also an occasion to recognize their experience in various fields, such as the protection of the environment and biodiversity, and the defense of cultural heritage.
Mr. Chair,
Indigenous Peoples offer an example of a life lived in harmony with the environment that they have come to know well and are committed to preserve.[1] Given their privileged relationship with their land, and drawing on their traditional knowledge and practices, Indigenous Peoples can contribute to the fight against climate change by enhancing the resilience of ecosystems. Moreover, their lands contain eighty percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity, making Indigenous Peoples irreplaceable custodians of its conservation, restoration and sustainable use.
Unfortunately, protected areas are often established without consulting or obtaining previous consent from Indigenous Peoples, who in turn are excluded from the administration and management of their traditional territories and left without adequate compensation. This can expose them to the risk of additional human rights violations, such as trafficking, forced labor, and sexual exploitation. Furthermore, if not properly monitored, dispossession of land for conservation purposes can lead to illegal extractive activities that further undermine the environment, which is a fundamental expression of indigenous identity. In this sense, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the right to free, prior and informed consent, must be upheld in all efforts.
The cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples consists of culturally meaningful knowledge, experiences, practices, objects, and places. Protecting and preserving these components is essential to achieving the ends of culture, namely: the integral development of the person and the good of society as a whole.[2] For this reason and in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, these peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their own cultural heritage.[3] Of course, culture can become sterile and decadent if it is exclusively inward looking, rejecting any exchange or debate.Therefore, an openness to dialogue, based on full respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, is essential to promote a culture of encounter against “a completely enclosed, a-historic, static ‘indigenism’ that would reject any kind of blending.”[4]
Mr. Chair,
Together with the protection of their culture, Indigenous Peoples play an invaluable role in the stewardship of the environment. For this reason, the Holy See is concerned that unsustainable tourism activities can lead, inter alia, to the commodification, loss and misuse of Indigenous culture, as well as the expropriation of their land and resources. “The sustainability of tourism, in fact, is measured by the impact on natural and social ecosystems: there is a need for a sensibility that expands the protection of ecosystems in a concrete way, so as to ensure a harmonious passage of tourists in environments that do not belong to them.”[5]
The extraordinary heritage of many Indigenous Peoples risks being undermined by attempts to impose a homogenized and standardized way of living, including by the tourist industry, which sometimes neglects cultural differences and advances a new form of colonization cloaked in the prospect of development. Indigenous Peoples embrace a different notion of progress, often more humanistic than the modern culture of “developed peoples.” Intolerance and lack of respect for indigenous popular cultures is a form of violence, based on a cold and judgmental way of viewing them, which cannot be accepted.[6]
I thank you.
[1] Cfr. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 471.
[2] Cfr. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 556.
[3] Cfr. UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 31.1.
[4] Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Querida Amazonia, 37.
[5] Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Message for World Tourism Day 2022, 27 September 2022.
[6] Cfr. Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 220.