Government is preparing its response to the findings of regional human rights body, the IACHR, which concluded that the administration is responsible for the violations of the rights of the indigenous people of Isseneru and the recommendations, among which is the call for reparations.
“When I have sent off government’s considered opinion on the IACHR recommendations, I shall be prepared to engage the media, etcetera. There are three recommendations,” Minister of Governance and Parliamentary Affairs, Gail Teixeira, told the Sunday Stabroek when asked about a response from government on the issue
There is a likelihood that the administration will not acquiesce to recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday said that Teixeira had explained to him why this country should not abide by and that “the tenor of the response will be that we do not agree with their findings.”
This newspaper on Tuesday reported that the IACHR has found that the State of Guyana is responsible for the violations of the rights of the Akawaios of Isseneru pertaining to collective territorial property, right to equality under the law and rights to health, food and water among other areas and has called for reparations.
In a report published on April 24, 2024, the IACHR stated that on November 28, 2023, the Commission adopted the Final Admissibility and Merits Report No. 297/23 and issued its final conclusions and recommendations to the State. This was based on a petition to it from Isseneru and the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) on September 5, 2013. On December 6, 2023, the Commission transmitted the report to the State with a deadline of one month to inform it on the measures adopted to comply with its recommendations. On January 10, 2024, the IACHR said that the State of Guyana requested an extension of 3 months to submit its response. On February 1, 2024, the IACHR granted a 3-week extension. As of April 24th this year, the IACHR said it had not received a response from the State in relation to the report.
Isseneru and the APA had claimed violations to property, to equality before the law, to justice and a fair trial, to the protection of mothers and children, to the preservation of health and wellbeing, and to enjoy the benefits of culture, all of them protected by Articles II, VII, XI, XIII, XVIII and XXIII of the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man (hereinafter the “American Declaration”), on account of the State’s alleged failure to adequately recognize, respect and protect the community’s territorial rights, its alleged granting of mining permits in the community’s ancestral lands without prior consultation or consent, its lack of protection of the community from the negative impacts of mining, and its alleged failure to provide the community with effective judicial remedies to counter the violations of their rights.
After lengthy engagements with Isseneru/APA and the State, the IACHR found that the state had violated the right to collective territorial property under Article XXIII of the American Declaration, insofar as the provisions of the Amerindian Act related to titling of ancestral indigenous territories (i) failed to recognize the preexistence of indigenous territorial rights, and visualize them as grants of State lands; (ii) did not establish a State obligation to grant Indigenous communities or villages a property title to their ancestral territory; (iii) conferred on the Minister of Amerindian Affairs, an excessive degree of discretionary powers in the decision on whether to grant property title to Indigenous communities, with no objective parameters or guidelines set forth in the legislation; (iv) failed to require the Minister to recognize the full extent of the ancestral territories of indigenous communities; and (v) did not admit the possibility of granting territorial property to indigenous peoples as a whole, which also affects their rights to participation and to the recognition of their legal personality.
The State of Guyana was also found to be in violation of the right to collective territorial property under Article XXIII of the American Declaration, because it has failed to grant Isseneru a property title over its entire ancestral territory, even though the community demonstrated that (i) it is a primarily Akawaio indigenous community, (ii) it is geographically set within Akawaio ancestral lands, (iii) the territory it claims corresponds to that of the ancestors and grandparents of its current members, (iv) it preserves a vital and spiritual link with that territory in its entirety, and (v) it needs the full extent of that territory to continue living in conformity with its economic, cultural and spiritual systems, and to pursue its livelihood and survival as an indigenous community. As the titling process over the entire territory is still unfinished, the IACHR report said that Guyana has also failed to properly delimit and demarcate those ancestral lands, thus incurring an additional violation of Article XXIII of the American Declaration.
Further, the State was also in breach of the rights to justice and due process under Articles XVIII and XXVI of the American Declaration, and the right to participation under Article XX thereof, because (i) the titling process took twenty years to complete and thereby incurred in an unjustified delay in its resolution; (ii) the community authorities and members went through legal uncertainty and insecurity as a result of the “overbroad” discretionary decision-making exercised by the Minister of Amerindian Affairs; (iii) the community was forced to acquiesce to a reduction in its legitimate claim to territory because of the Ministry’s unfounded assertions on the size of the requested lands; and (iv) the decision-making process was not participatory in nature.
The right to equality before the law under Article II of the American Declaration was also violated because Guyana has abstained from adopting the special positive measures required by Isseneru to gain prompt and secure access to legal property over its entire ancestral territory.
A series of other violations were found by the IACHR. The council of Isseneru has called for dialogue with the government on the matter.
