The rights of indigenous peoples who have inhabited forest and peatland areas since ancient times have been violated by converting their lands and forests into palm oil plantations and other extractive industries. Moreover, forest fires have impacted the health and lives of the indigenous peoples who live around the forest, causing them to contract lung diseases, smog exacerbating asthma, bronchitis, respiratory infections, and heart disease in the elderly, and affecting pregnant women and children.
Sadly, many indigenous peoples have experienced extortion, forcibly receiving large sums of money for business projects and deceitful profit-sharing schemes, only to later be threatened to leave the forest.
Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the UNGA resolution, which obligates the companies and the government fully implement multilateral environmental agreements that concern the right of the indigenous people to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and to connect their rights to other rights and existing international law. There must be further studies on palm oil plantations, extractive industries, and their impacts on indigenous peoples.
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“We have ratified many human rights (HR) declarations and their instruments or even supported international declarations on human rights, but they are hardly carried out. Everyone is too busy with their own affairs while forgetting and violating the rights of our indigenous peoples,” concluded Nukila. (des)
