Sub Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights - 55th Session

28 July 2003

The Sub-Commission needs to find its voice on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights needs to speak out on how human rights are essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The rights of minorities and indigenous peoples should be a central focus of this work, as respecting these rights can contribute greatly to fulfilling the MDGs effectively and equitably. MRG encourages the Sub-Commission to examine the MDGs in more detail from a human rights perspective with a view to supporting states in their efforts make these goals a reality for all.

At the UN Millennium Assembly, the member states of the United Nations committed themselves to achieving the MDGs. These eight goals now dominate the policy objectives of many states and development agencies to the year 2015. The goals include a reduction by half of extreme poverty; improvements in the lives of slum dwellers; improvements in child and maternal health; universal primary education; and sustainable development.

MRG believes that the MDGs can be met more effectively by ensuring that the needs and rights of minorities and indigenous peoples are respected in strategies to achieve the goals. Globally, minorities and indigenous peoples are among the poorest of the poor. They should gain from progress towards the goals. Yet minorities and indigenous peoples are often left behind. The particular causes of their poverty, such as discrimination, are little understood or inadequately addressed. Greater effort is needed to ensure that minorities and indigenous peoples benefit fairly from development and the international commitment to meet the MDGs.

The best approach is a rights-based approach. The application of minority rights and indigenous peoples rights standards can not only offer benefits to these groups but also helps to create more effective and sustainable programmes for achieving the goals. A few examples will serve to illustrate this point.

Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Despite being among the poorest, minorities and indigenous peoples may not be included in the one half of the people lifted from extreme poverty by 2015. This is because poverty reduction strategies do not usually ensure that programmes reach these groups (e.g. through monitoring with disaggregated data) and do not consider the particular barriers they face for poverty reduction.

One way to improve poverty reduction strategies is to identify minority and indigenous communities and to understand the circumstances of their poverty. Minorities and indigenous peoples may be poorer because they have been denied citizenship and thus lack access to social services. Many Afro-descendants in Latin America, for example, lack birth registration and identity documents, which limits their access to social assistance and to formal sector employment.1 Minorities and indigenous peoples may live in regions that have been under-developed. The impact of discrimination is key. Systematic discrimination reduces individuals' ability to benefit from and to contribute to human and economic development. Discrimination can lessen individuals' prospects for decent health, housing, education, financial credit, or political participation. Even with pro-poor growth strategies, discrimination will continue to be a barrier for minorities and indigenous peoples unless it is tackled directly through anti-discrimination legislation, enforcement mechanisms and special measures2 in development programmes to overcome the impact of discrimination.

It is also necessary to understand poverty through the values of minorities and indigenous peoples. For example, official poverty mapping in some countries may denote certain indigenous peoples as 'poor', without enabling indigenous peoples themselves to identify concepts and indicators of poverty according to their own cultures and lifestyle choices.3

Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education

Education systems must be compatible with minimum standards of minority rights, and culturally appropriate, if minority enrolment levels are to improve. Exclusion of minority and indigenous children from school is often a result of discriminatory treatment either by teachers or pupils, a curriculum that perpetuates negative representations of minorities and indigenous peoples, or the lack of education provision in minority languages. Roma children in South East Europe, for example, commonly experience discrimination in the classroom and segregation, and few municipalities offer Roma language education at the primary level.4

Therefore, training should be provided for teachers, and education introduced for tolerance and diversity. Textbooks that stigmatize minorities and indigenous peoples should be withdrawn, and funding provided for classes in minorities first languages. Minority and indigenous groups may also wish to establish education that promotes and develops their culture and livelihoods. All of these steps may help to prevent parents from withdrawing their children from formal education where they are seen to be discriminated against and gaining no culturally relevant skills. Development agencies should also monitor funding for primary education to ensure that schools in minority and indigenous areas do not receive disproportionately less funding than other poor communities.

Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability

Minorities and indigenous peoples are often displaced in the name of 'development'. They are generally not consulted on development projects that might displace them and receive little or no compensation as a result. Such strategies may actually contribute to further impoverishment of these groups or cause displacement (a common by-product of dam construction, for example5) to urban slums, thus lowering the chances of achieving the MDGs on housing and safe water. Forced displacement has also been used as a means of improving access to social services; there is a risk that similar strategies will be used in the name of achieving the MDGs for these groups.

How can the Sub-Commission contribute to achieving the MDGs?

While a set of indicators has been selected to measure progress towards the MDGs,6 there are no guidelines as to how they should be achieved. The Millennium Project set up by the UN Secretary-General is now attempting to give some guidance. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Special Rapporteurs on economic, social and cultural rights, have made a statement in November 20027 stressing that the MDGs are linked to human rights. They have pledged to cooperate in achieving these goals within their mandates.

The Sub-Commission and its Working Groups are in a similar position to so contribute. The UN Secretary General has noted with concern that insufficient progress has been made in reaching the MDGs. Minority and indigenous rights can help to achieve the goals but states and development actors need more guidance on this link. This is particularly useful now as states begin to report on their progress towards the goals. This guidance is important both for the outcomes sought and for the process undertaken to achieve the goals. In development, the process is at least as important as the goal; and can make the difference between sustainable and successful outcomes, and an ineffectual or even harmful outcome. For minorities and indigenous peoples this process of participation is essential to ensuring that their rights and needs are fulfilled.

MRG recommends that the Sub-Commission elaborate specific recommendations to states on how to ensure that the MDGs are achieved in a manner that is compatible with human rights standards. Special attention in any such recommendations must be paid to marginalized groups, including minorities and indigenous peoples. This information would be welcomed by other bodies within the UN, including the UNDP and the Millennium Project, to support their work on the goals. Bilateral development agencies that have given high priority to the MDGs would also benefit from these recommendations, which would in turn strengthen the existing commitment within many development agencies to promote human rights in development cooperation.

The work of the Sub-Commission can help to ensure that the MDGs become an opportunity for reducing inequalities rather than increasing exclusion.

1. Margarita Sanchez and Maurice Bryan with MRG partners, Afro-descendants, Discrimination and Economic Exclusion in Latin America, London: Minority Rights Group International, 2003, pp. 14.

2. Article 2.2 of the ICERD allows states to take special measures in the "social, economic, cultural and other fields" for the purposes of ensuring that groups discriminated against can enjoy their human rights fully and equally.

3. Birgitte Feiring and MRG partners, Indigenous Peoples and Poverty: The Cases of Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, London: Minority Rights Group International, 2002, p. 14.

4. Dragoljub Ackovic, Roma in Serbia: Introducing Romany Language and Culture into Primary Schools, London: Minority Rights Group International, 2003.

5. Mustaq Gadi et al, Unheard Indigenous Voices: The Kihals in Pakistan, London: Minority Rights Group International, 2003.

6. For a list of the proposed indicators see: http://www.developmentgoals.org

7. The Millennium Development Goals and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A Joint States by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Commission on Human Rights' Special Rapporteurs on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (29 November 2002).