As a member of the Cambodia ICT and Digital Forum (CamIDF), I had an opportunity to apply for the Paris Peace Forum (PPF) program for the first time. I was selected to attend the fifth edition of the Forum under a project titled “Open Data for Indigenous and Ethnic Minority” and it is a rare opportunity. As indigenous people (IP), I believe we would greatly benefit from this project because it will improve our access to data, information, and self-governance. Additionally, it was displayed on the global stage and viewed globally. I had a chance to speak with experts and decision-makers in this domain.
Despite many hurdles, indigenous Jarai Rochom Munny refused to wed at 14 and is instead pursuing a career in technology, with the aim of inspiring female members of her community to follow in her footsteps.
As you all know today 21 March marks a very special day. Today is the United Nations Day on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination because on 21 March 1960, police in South Africa opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, against the apartheid “pass laws”. The UN General Assembly proclaimed this Day in 1966 to commemorate this massacre and to call upon the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
The various impacts of what I would term “structural discrimination” and “institutional racism” on Indigenous Peoples are reflected in high levels of poverty, maternal and infant mortality, low life expectancy, marginalization, social exclusion and limited access to adequate housing, healthcare, education, employment and decent working conditions; participation and representation, or to justice and redress. In addition, Indigenous Peoples continue to face discrimination in the exercise of their rights to own and control their lands and territories, their rights to consultation and free and prior informed consent and self-determination. Discrimination and racism were used to justify colonial invasion and expansion, occupation of indigenous lands and territories, exploitation and domination of Indigenous Peoples and the whole scale destruction of entire indigenous societies. Racism was implicit in many legal doctrines such as the Doctrine of Discovery’s concepts of “terra nullius”, “effective occupation” which were used to justify the invasion of indigenous territories and the dispossession of their ancestral territories. Racism justified the civilizing mission of colonial powers and their duty to bring the so-called benefits of Western civilization to “uncivilized” , “primitive” peoples or “inferior” races around the world. Racism is behind the contamination of indigenous lands, waters and territories by nuclear testing, dumping of toxic wastes, pesticides, fumigation, oil spills, dams or what peoples have termed environmental racism.
Racism is also behind the rejection of the legitimacy of indigenous values, institutions, justice systems, traditional knowledge and land management and conservation practises. Indigenous Peoples supposed “backwardness” and “irrationality” to manage their lands or internal affairs have crystallised as conventional wisdom in the minds of politicians and members of the judiciary system.
RACISM AND CONSERVATION
Racism is behind the evictions of indigenous peoples, the development of national parks and protected areas excluding the original inhabitants of these lands.
Today is also the International Day of Forests. Proclaiming the Day in 2012, the UN General Assembly called on the international community to celebrate and raise awareness of the importance of protecting forests and trees. Interestingly, the word ‘forest’ originates as a juridical term in early middle age in Europe to designate royal game preserves reserved for the king’s recreational activities. In Asia and Africa, the first protected areas were established as recreational opportunities, hunting grounds for Western colonial elites.
The first “protected areas” established in the USA such as Yellowstone National Park or the Yosemite National Park involved the violent evictions of Indigenous Peoples who had been living on these lands for thousands of years. Some of the earliest American advocates of conservation and protected areas promoting pristine environment and the fortress conservation approach, founders of high-profile conservation NGOs, were also famous proponents of scientific racism, colonial expansion and eugenics. Indigenous Peoples were seen as weak races and were doomed to disappear in the course of progress and modernity.
Conservation’s colonial underpinnings continue to portray Indigenous Peoples as responsible for conservation problems, and permit practices that forcibly evict Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands and prevent them from practising hunting, fishing or grazing their animals, accessing sacred sites, collecting wood, often by extreme violence and militarized means.
It is now time to acknowledge and come to terms with the Western conservation’s deep-seated systemic racism, which has historically excluded Indigenous Peoples and continues to do so. It is also time to operate a paradigm shift as conservation is about to become one of the main industries destroying Indigenous Peoples’ lives and violating their human rights. This paradigm shift was already announced by the world’s leading conservationists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress held in Durban in 2003 where the 2003 Durban Action Plan was adopted. In this regard, Targets, 8 9 and 10 require that all existing and future protected areas are managed and established in full compliance with the rights of Indigenous Peoples and ” have representatives chosen by Indigenous Peoples in their management proportionate to their rights and interests” and require the adoption of “participatory mechanisms for the restitution of Indigenous Peoples’ traditional lands and territories that were incorporated in protected areas without their free and informed consent [shall be] established and implemented by 2010”.
21 years after such announcement where are we? Conservation institutions and policies continue to exclude and discriminate against Indigenous Peoples. In the name of protecting nature, protected areas and national parks continue to be established on the lands of Indigenous Peoples without their consent, in violation of their rights to lands, natural resources and self-determination. Indigenous Peoples continue to be forcibly removed from their lands with devastating consequences. The colonial and discriminatory “fortress conservation” model continues to prevail and to be duplicated in conservation initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND CONSERVATION
As UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, I have witnessed myself during field visits the destructive impacts of conservation projects on Indigenous Peoples and their lands including violent evictions, destruction of their houses and traditional subsistence economies, expropriation of land, denial of self-governance. Indigenous Peoples can no longer hunt, fish, graze their cattle, they lose access to their religious, sacred and cultural sites. They are denied access to justice and reparation, including restitution and compensation. Indigenous Peoples are often forced to relocate without any resettlement programme or access to adequate housing, essential services, water, food, health care or education. The trauma experienced by Indigenous Peoples, in particular children, women and elders, who are forcibly evicted from their lands and homes create severe trans-generational post-traumatic stress disorder. Often, evictions are accompanied by extreme violence and severe human rights abuses perpetrated by rangers, police officers and army officials including torture and ill treatment, arbitrary arrests and detentions, unfair trial, extra-judicial killings, summary executions, enforced disappearances, sexual gender-based violence, death threats etc. % of the total defenders killed exposes the disproportionate targeting.
Beyond this horrific human toll, this model of fortress conservation undermines the very goals of conservation. Decades of experience with fortress conservation contradicts the argument that the removal of Indigenous Peoples is necessary for the conservation and or restoration of biodiversity. Mounting studies have shown that Indigenous Peoples possess the knowledge and ability necessary to successfully conserve and manage bio-diverse ecosystems more effectively than governments or conservation organisations, and at a fraction of the cost, particularly where their rights are recognized, respected and supported. The fortress conservation model diminishes rather than enhances local livelihoods and biodiversity.
Indigenous ancestral territories encompass about 22 per cent of the world’s land surface that hold 80 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity. The ancestral lands of Indigenous Peoples contain the most intact ecosystems. Wildlife is abundant on indigenous lands, but not because such areas are left untouched, but precisely because Indigenous Peoples have been occupying and conserving such lands for centuries.
As we all know, we are facing a global loss of biological diversity on a scale unprecedented in the entire human history. In December 2022, UN member states have endorsed the goal of protecting and conserving 30 per cent of the planet’s lands and waters by 2030 in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the COP15, also known as the 30 by 30.
The Framework acknowledges the important roles and contributions of Indigenous Peoples as custodians of biodiversity and as partners in its conservation, restoration and sustainable use. It also states that implementation must ensure that “the rights, knowledge, including traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity, innovations, worldviews, values and practices of Indigenous Peoples are respected, and documented and preserved with their free, prior and informed consent, including through their full and effective participation in decision-making, in accordance with relevant national legislation, international instruments, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and human rights law”.
Despite this language, I remain extremely concerned by the potential negative impact of this 30 by 30 conservation project. Given that some 15.7 per cent of the world’s land is currently covered by protected areas, to reach 30 per cent would require a doubling of the area under some form of conservation protection.
There is an urgent need to establish clear, coherent and consistent human rights guidance for both conservation organizations and major funders of conservation. A number of influential conservation organisations or conservation funders have no policy on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Others have adopted standards or policy statements which represent an important step forward in reconciling conservation and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, however many of these policies or guidelines present substantial weaknesses and gaps, are outdated or do not reflect the current human rights standards and jurisprudence as it applied to Indigenous Peoples.
To conclude, human rights-based conservation is the most effective, efficient, and equitable path forward to safeguarding biodiversity. The protection of the ecological integrity of critical ecosystems and positive conservation outcomes are strongly correlated with community-based management that engage Indigenous peoples and recognize their human rights, including their rights to self-determination, free and prior informed consent, ownership and ancestral lands, waters, territories and other natural resources
CALL FOR ACTION
On that special day, I call the international community including states, UN Agencies including UNESCO, conservation NGOs in particular the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the World Wide Fund for Nature, Co-operation Agencies in particular the United States Agency for International Development and the German Development Cooperation and other public and private donors and stakeholders to join their efforts to eradicate racism and racial discrimination in conservation embodied by the fortress conservation model, which continue to devastate the lives of millions of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; Africa) and Latin America.
I call upon donors, investors and funders to adopt explicit policies and guidelines for the rights of Indigenous Peoples that are aligned with international human rights standards, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and recent developments and jurisprudence.
I call upon them to condition funding on the adoption and application of a solid Indigenous human rights-based approach by the recipient, prohibit funding to projects resulting in the forced resettlement of Indigenous Peoples or forced restriction of access to traditional and customary resources and prohibit funding to projects developed without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples and which will restrict their access to livelihoods or their lands.
I urge conservation organisations to demonstrate a genuine commitment to a human rights-based approach to conservation and the eradication of racism and racial discrimination in conservation. Indigenous Peoples should be recognised as equal partner rights-holders in conservation efforts undertaken on their lands and territories. Ensuring respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, rather than excluding them from their lands in the name of conservation, will ultimately benefit the planet and its peoples as a whole.
I call upon conservation donors including Cooperation Agencies to direct financial flows to support Indigenous Peoples to develop and sustain their own conservation initiatives. Indigenous Peoples should be acknowledged as key and equal partners in protecting and restoring nature and recognized for their conservation contributions. Indigenous knowledges and sustainable nature governance practices must be placed at the forefront of efforts to identify, designate, and manage new and existing areas important for cultural and biological diversity, including Indigenous protected and conserved areas, and other Indigenous efforts to protect biodiversity, such as Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs). These are forest and biodiversity conservation programmes designed, developed and led by those who have known, occupied and protected these forests for thousands of years.
I call for the rapid adoption of the H.R.7025 – Advancing Human Rights-Centered International Conservation Act of 2022.
A microfinance credit officer in Ratanakiri recently told me he thought Cambodia’s Indigenous communities would be landless in the next 10 years, as they sell off their land to pay off loans. His worrying prediction comes in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when financial instability pushed even more people in the country to take on debt. Many local community members, including Indigenous communities, have borrowed money from banks and microfinance institutions to buy land, pay for medical expenses, build houses, fund farms, carry out religious ceremonies and pay school tuition. But many of these communities are struggling to pay back their debt.
As of 2022, there were 185 banks and microfinance institutions that were members of the Credit Bureau of Cambodia, including leasing companies and rural credit operators, providing loans to 4.8 million borrowers. The vast majority of the microloans issued in the country are held by just 10 institutions. In 2020, the average microloan in Cambodia was around $4,000 while the GDP per capita was about $1,500 that same year. Cambodians have more than $16 billion in microloan debt.
In Ratanakiri province, Indigenous community members are seriously concerned about the impact of the debt on the community, fearing the loss of land and the uncertain futures of their children. Around 80% of Indigenous families in Kam and Kres villages in O’chum district are indebted to microfinance institutions, with an average loan size of $1,000 in 2021, which has since grown.
The purported purpose of microfinance loans is to assist small-scale business start-ups, to support poor people in rural areas, to relieve families of financial burdens, and especially to advance the livelihoods of poor and subsistence-based farmers. However, many of these institutions have become profit-oriented and have implemented policies that violate human rights, including policies which result in pressured land sales.
Cambodia’s Pathway to Microfinance
In the 1990’s, in the aftermath of the long civil war, Cambodia started to rebuild its economy by launching economic reform policies. The financial sector played a key role in this process by fueling economic activities through loans, particularly loans given to people in rural areas. The banking system and microfinance institutions thus began having an increased role in the country’s development process. Many of these microfinance institutions evolved out of NGOs that provided microloans to fill in the gaps in the banking sector.
In 1999, the Law on Banking and Financial Institutions went into effect, allowing microfinance institutions to transform themselves into commercial institutions regulated by the National Bank of Cambodia. The Royal Government of Cambodia proclaimed 2006 as “a year of microfinance in Cambodia,” highlighting the role that banks and finance institutions play in alleviating poverty in rural areas and ensuring economic sustainability. Since then, the Cambodian microfinance sector has ballooned.
As of 2020, there were 10 financial institutions actively operating in Kam and Kres villages. The NGOs Licadho and Equitable Cambodia filed a complaint against six microfinance institutions funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. The complaint was filed to the IFC’s watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman. The watchdog is currently conducting its investigation, but its initial assessment found “preliminary indications of harm” to borrowers and violations of the IFC environmental and social standards.
Right to Relief, a report conducted by Licadho and EC, found that 90% of the Kreung Indigenous community members living in the two villages have fallen into heavy loan debt. These communities are dependent on traditional rotational agriculture, the cultivation of seasonal vegetables and cashew trees, and access to non-timber forest products for their daily livelihoods. On individual loans, community members use their housing and farming land titles as collateral.
Not only are there loan debt issues, but these Kreung communities have also been impacted by an ongoing land conflict with Hoang Anh Gia Lai, a Vietnamese rubber company. The company took over their farmland, spiritual forests and burial grounds starting in 2010 without prior consultation, which cut these communities off from their main sources of income, according to the NGO Inclusive Development International.
These issues have had negative consequences for Indigenous Kreung communities. Residents reported having trouble sleeping, not having enough food to eat and selling possessions and land to pay off loans. Residents have migrated to find work, and some locals report that children are working to support their families. In addition, the behavior of credit officers has been reported to be aggressive during their loan collection practices. According to the NGO Licadho, loan collectors have pressured community members to borrow money from private lenders and threatened them with arrest or legal complaints if they continue to delay payments.
“When I was five days late, the [credit officer] came to my house and said, ‘if you can’t find money, you will have to sleep at the police station.’ I was afraid because my child is only one year old,” one member of the community told the researchers involved in the Right to Relief report.
The report also notes that about seven families in Kam village had to sell their land to repay microfinance debt during Covid-19. According to a 2022 study funded by the German government, about 167,000 Cambodian households across the country sold their lands to repay loan debts over the five previous years.
Besides land sales, economic stress from over-indebtedness may be one cause of illegal logging activities within the community-protected area in Ratanakiri. CamboJA News reported that at least 527 Jarai families in Lom village, Pok Nhai commune, Oyadav district have borrowed money from financial institutions, with average loans ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Residents reported resorting to cutting down trees to sell timber goods to customers across the border in Vietnam in order to repay their debts.
Potential Interventions for the Microfinance Industry
Without adequate attention to these issues and policies that can help to alleviate the loan debts, Indigenous communities will continue falling into debt traps and will face increasing landlessness. There are steps that national financial institutions, the government and international lenders can take to relieve heavy loan debts or to prevent individuals from undertaking debt which will harm them in the long-term.
First, banks and microfinance institutions should provide microloans to residents without them using land titles as collateral. The bank policies for these loans should be designed to meet the needs of the poor by providing a very small amount of money with a low interest rate. This system would assist Indigenous community members in improving their livelihoods, which often rely on natural resources, while still ensuring they can pass along their land to their children. With this approach, financial institutions should clearly define the eligibility criteria, such as very simple income-generating activities with outlined financial management plans.
Second, more training should be offered to microfinance institutions about ethical loan practices, with a specific focus on the issues facing Indigenous residents. The government should implement training programs that discourage predatory behaviors by credit officers, such as pressuring community members to take out loans or threatening people late on payments with legal action. As many Indigenous communities and Cambodian people in rural areas are illiterate and may lack financial education, the government, in particular the National Bank of Cambodia, could also initiate financial classes that inform the public on personal finance, business skills and risk management.
In addition, the government should consider implementing a debt moratorium for a certain period of time to relieve those who are heavily indebted. Thailand’s cabinet approved a suspension of principal and interest payments for three years for farmers last September, and Cambodia should watch the results of this measure closely to determine how such debt alleviation might work in Cambodia.
Finally, international lenders, such as the World Bank’s IFC, Germany’s DEG, and the Netherlands’ FMO, should strengthen their policies to protect human rights and the environment by conducting further research into this sector. Their policies must ensure that their loan recipients respect their performance standards and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and include strong due diligence processes.
Indigenous communities are some of the most marginalized populations in the country, and they deserve special attention and consideration when it comes to debt. They maintain traditions through management of forests, land and natural resources to make a living, and these practices have been handed down from generation to generation. Without a reexamination of the policies related to credit and debt repayment, they are at risk of losing their cultures, identities and livelihoods, along with their land.
Rithy Bun is a young research fellow at Future Forum who has many years of experience working with Indigenous communities.
The E-Sak Ka Ou Declaration calls attention to the key role of Indigenous peoples to (as well as the challenges they face from) climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation programs.
A word meaning ‘gill of the manta ray’ and released ahead of COP28 last year by Asian Indigenous leaders, the E-Sak Ka Ou Declaration is a reminder of what remains undone toward upholding the rights of Indigenous communities.
Commitments at the global level to recognize Indigenous knowledge and protect communities’ rights must also be reflected in regional and national policy frameworks, a new op-ed argues.
This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Mondulkiri provincial court on Monday questioned NGO rights group Adhoc official and four Bunong natives after land brokers and fellow villagers filed a defamation and incitement complaint against them. The complaint was made after the suspects submitted evidence of chopped trees and encroachment by the plaintiffs, made up of land brokers and a few villagers.
TA HEUY, Cambodia — Cambodian farmers Nuoy and Nangkek were both in their late 20s when they took out their first microloan in 2018 for around $600 to help grow their crops. Today, the couple owe more than $10,000 to two financial institutions charging 18% annual interest.
M’lou Prey II commune authorities, of Preah Vihear’s Chheb district, submitted documentation Tuesday to the district regarding alleged encroachment on land farmed by Indigenous Kuy people following a protest earlier this month.
On January 7, nearly 100 Kuy people from Bos and Preus Ka’ak villages gathered to prevent outsiders with tractors from clearing farmland. The dispute marks the second incident in less than a month of Kuy people from Chheb district fighting back against outsiders clearing community farmland.
An international organization accrediting global forest conservation projects has opened an investigation into the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project run by the NGO Wildlife Alliance and the Environment Ministry.
The government has permitted private firm Focus Trans Global Venture Co Ltd (FTGV) to study the construction of a new airport in Mondulkiri province, northeast of Cambodia, as well as invest in a build, operate and transfer (BOT) model, the Office of the Council Minister said on January 9.
