Happy International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples!
We at Tebtebba, together with our partners in the Philippines, UPAKAT (Philippine Network of Indigenous Knowledge Holders) and our global partners, ELATIA (Indigenous partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America), we wish you more strength and power in your work to build more self-governing and sustainable communities.
It is always inspiring to see the passion and commitment of indigenous peoples to assert and claim their rights contained in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. August 9 was the day the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples first met at the UN in Geneva in 1982. We celebrate this day when we finally succeeded to get the UN to officially open its door for our participation to raise our issues and craft the UN Declaration on our rights. Since then, we got the UN General Assembly to adopt the UNDRIP in 13 September 2007.
Our task is to continue our efforts to get States to implement the UNDRIP and establish national laws to recognize and protect our individual and collective rights and corporations to respect our rights. We need to sustain our efforts to empower ourselves. We have come a long way but challenges remain which include criminalization of indigenous persons and organizations, grabbing of ancestral territories, forced displacement, among others. We will not be daunted and we continue to face these problems with grit and determination. Long live indigenous peoples of the world. Mabuhay!!
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
Executive Director, Tebtebba Foundation
