Topic: Indigenous Land Rights
Country: Russia
Delegate Name: Celia Kaechele
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Russia position papers GLIMUN 2009 committees
Once of the major difficulties facing indigenous peoples is the fact that they are attempting to operate with in a different culture that is acting in a way entirely separate from their own. They have intentionally created a schism within their own country, a feat difficult in itself, but then they have to continue acting independently while fearing the loss of their rights, or the infringement of the country around them on the land they have established as belonging to them. They face, in many countries, the issues of poverty and their own fundamental freedoms.
Indigenous people in Russia, as is the case everywhere in the world, require special attention from their government to exist. We currently provide access to formal education as well as health care to our small number of indigenous people. We are still, however, slightly behind on establishing the rights of these peoples, but we are continuing to labor towards righting this situation. We have in place two laws; The Law on Guarantees of Small Peoples’ Rights, and Law on Territories of Traditional Natural Resources Use of the Small Indigenous Nations of the Russian North, Siberia and the Far East, that we have implemented to help aid us in our quest of recognizing the rights of our indigenous peoples.
We realize that we may have some issues with the infringement of different projects and industries on the lands of our indigenous people, but our country is so large ( 16,995,800 square kilometers) that there is plenty of available land for them to inhabit if it turns out that we are in desperate need of an area that they currently happen to be inhabiting. It is not as though we are intentionally going where the indigenous people are residing, we would apply the same logic if a citizens of modern Russia were positioned in an area that was required for some other use by the government.
It is very important that each individual country work towards, as we have, providing their indigenous peoples with the rights that they are due. Without these rights, and without laws in place to protect them small groups of indigenous people have no hope of surviving in our modern day world.
