My work advocating for Indigenous Peoples whose lives and communities are threatened by resource extraction began as a member of an international team that co-founded the US nonprofit, Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF). In Suriname, a South American country rich in natural and cultural beauty, I came face to face with the reality that economic interests like resource extraction are prioritized over human life.
I learned that the legal principle Terra Nullius makes it perfectly legal for governments, international financial institutions and industry to remove Indigenous Peoples from their lands to support the goals of economic development even if the toxic waste containing cyanide and mercury generated by mining poisons Indigenous people and communities without providing them redress or remedy.
Let me say that again – it is within the rights of a nation to poison their own people in the name of economic development, without sanction or penalty. The slow extermination of Indigenous Peoples has often been justified for the sake of “the greater good” and the “highest and best use of the land and its resources.” Economic development is commonly painted as the obvious priority that must be placed above all others.
I could not believe this at first. Our team spent years seeking a solution that would integrate concern for health and justice from every conceivable international governance structure1. Like many of us, I believed that an international authority would provide justice to Indigenous friends. The toxic impacts of mining threaten the communities, water supplies, food supplies, and the very bodies of Indigenous siblings. It was on this search for relief that I learned about the Doctrine of Discovery – the legal and policy paradigm that privileges Christian nations that colonized the “new world” with the total authority to control land within their jurisdiction, while the original inhabitants are granted the right to occupancy, and that only at the pleasure of the settler government.
Twenty years after discovering this difficult truth in relationship with Indigenous friends, SIHF has developed a mechanism for Indigenous communities to collect and post vital health and human rights evidence. The app, called Victim’s Voice, is a long time in coming. Our team believes the app will democratize how Human Rights testimony is collected. Any person with a smartphone can collect evidence and securely submit it via the app.
The app has its roots in a simple printed form-based mechanism, created by Dan Peplow Executive Director of SIHF, that our team used to collect and report human rights health and human rights violations. The evidence collected was used as the basis of reports to the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Our team hoped that the form would allow Indigenous individuals and communities to speak for themselves rather than relying on third party human-rights delegations to collect evidence on their behalf. These delegations are often expensive, time-consuming, and do not have the capacity to collect evidence exhaustively – most often they can only provide a snapshot of one time and place.
Over the years, our team worked with communities to interact with the United Nations Environmental Program, the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues, the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Toxins, the Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality, and with other human rights defenders to engage the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review. The Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality showed a particular interest in Dan’s human rights form. The commissioners encouraged our team to develop and curate testimony that could be shared with the UN human rights mechanisms.
None of the UN bodies we petitioned have enforcement authority, nor do other international structures listed. Still, Dan argues, it is intolerable for people to die quietly without notice: “Maybe by generating the details of specific individuals, families, and communities, ordinary people will wake up and demand justice.” Maybe these reports will give Human Rights defenders and rapporteurs at the UN what they need to call for new international policies, and even a new governing body empowered with the authority to provide relief and redress to the victims of economic development.
The UN was created to provide a venue for member states to engage in diplomacy together, honoring the sovereignty of each member. This system, like so many colonial governments, is based upon the Doctrine of Discovery. In international public law, when the definition terra nullius (empty land) is given to a land, it can legally legitimize its occupation and acquisition of sovereignty by another nation, under the Doctrine of Discovery, which the International Court of Justice has approved as a legal method of acquisition of territory2.
What we need in the international arena is a body with authority so that communities who are victimized by their own governments are able to seek redress and repair. Perhaps the Victim’s Voice App is a small step toward realizing this goal.
Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is co- founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is also the co-founder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has worked in relationship with vulnerable Indigenous Peoples since 2005. She is a columnist for Anabaptist World, and co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler.
Footnotes
1Including, but not limited to: the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Development Bank’s board of governors, the United States Treasury, which provides authority to the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Health Organization (with a specific request to trigger the Adelaide Accord/Health in all Policies), the G-20 health summit, and the International Red Cross. The United Nations Mechanisms Dan has petitioned are listed in the body of the article.
2 Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/terra_nullius#:~:text=In%20international%20public%20law%2C%20when,method%20of%20acquisition%20of%20territory
