Activities of Marie-Christine VERGIAT related to 2017/2206(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on violation of the rights of indigenous peoples in the world, including land grabbing PDF (667 KB) DOC (101 KB)
Amendments (33)
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas traditional indigenous territories encompass approximately 22% of the world’s land surface and are estimated to hold 80% of the planet’s biodiversity; whereas indigenous reservations constitute the main barrier against deforestation; whereas the tropical forests inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities contribute, at least for one quarter, to store carbon across the tropical forest biome, making them valuable in any strategy to address climate change;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas human rights treaties 1 a recognise the right of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands and resources and provide that states must consult indigenous peoples in good faith in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent pertaining to projects that can have a negativen impact on their ways of life or that can lead to the displacement of their populations;, such consultation to take place before legislative and administrative measures affecting them are adopted and applied; _________________ 1a Cross-cutting amendment.
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. Whereas the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises indigenous peoples’ collective and individual rights, in particular their rights to their lands, their possessions, their natural resources, their territories, their culture, their identity and their language, to employment, health and education, and to determine freely their political status and economic development;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the collective and individual rights of indigenous peoples continue to be violated in various regions of the world, and as a result they continue to face physical, psychological and sexual violence as well as racism, exclusion, discrimination, forced evictions, destructive settlement, illegal expropriation of their traditional domains or deprivation of access to their resources and livelihoods; whereas, according to the UN, indigenous peoples are facing greater violations of their rights than was the case 10 years ago;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas indigenous peoples face alarming poverty, disease and illiteracy rates, insufficient access to health care, education, civil rights, including political participation and representation; whereas there is a lack of awareness and understanding for indigenous peoples, and their cultures, languages, beliefs and symbols; whereas they face ongoing disrespect and often find themselves seriously threatened; a UN report published in 2016 1 b estimates that 95% of the almost 6 700 languages spoken in the world today are at risk of vanishing by the end of the century, the great majority of those threatened being indigenous languages; whereas, because these indigenous languages are a core component of the identity and culture of the people who use them, their loss is a direct threat to the existence of those people and to global cultural diversity; whereas very particular attention must therefore be paid to preserving indigenous peoples’ threatened languages and their cultural rights; _________________ 1b http://undocs.org/en/E/C.19/2016/10
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas many indigenous peoples continue to be victims of murder, extrajudicial executions, mutilation, torture, rape, arbitrary detentions, a high suicide rate, physical assault, harassment, mass population displacement – particularly in South America, Africa and South-East Asia – and intimidation for defending the right to their ancestral territories and its natural resources, including the access to water and food, as well as to their spiritual sites and sacred burial grounds;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas nowadays there is a trend towards the militarisation of some reserves and protected areas, which sometimes overlap with the lands of indigenous and local communities, causing serious human rights violat(Does not affect the English versions;.)
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
Ha. whereas indigenous women are victims of violence and of dual discrimination, on grounds of both their culture and their gender; whereas, according to the UN, at least one indigenous woman in three is raped at some point in her life; whereas rates of maternal mortality, teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, among indigenous populations are higher than the average; whereas indigenous women are particularly affected by growing inequality in various forms, the incidence of which is greater on women than on men because, inter alia, they do the most dangerous and poorly paid types of work;
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H b (new)
Recital H b (new)
Hb. whereas, globally, more than 100 indigenous peoples have decided to refuse contact with the outside world; whereas these communities are the most vulnerable on the planet, their existence being imperilled in particular by oil prospecting, deforestation and drug trafficking and the infrastructure associated with those activities;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas in recent years there has been a disturbing increase in homicides, attacks and other forms of violence against human rights defenders and activists in the context of the defence of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, environmental rights and land rights; and, although 2018 is the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the NGO Front Line Defenders reports that 2017 saw the murder of 312 human rights defenders, 67% of them activists defending indigenous peoples’ land rights and environmental rights;
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I a (new)
Recital I a (new)
Ia. whereas the term ‘land grabbing’ refers to any acquisition by private or public parties of rights to substantial tracts of land, whether in the form of outright ownership, achieved through the direct purchase of the land from its previous owner, or of rights of use, achieved through the conclusion of leases conferring rights in rem and concentrating land in the hands of big (public or private) landowners, to the detriment of local populations;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I b (new)
Recital I b (new)
Ib. whereas, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), between 2006 and 2011, international investors negotiated to buy or lease 50-80 million hectares of farmland in developing countries; whereas two-thirds of that land is in sub- Saharan Africa; whereas, since 2008, there has been an exponential increase in land grabbing, particularly by multinational agri-food companies; whereas, in a report published in 2016, the NGO Grain estimated that, over the previous decade, there had been 491 cases, in 78 countries, of foreign investors grabbing large tracts (i.e. 500- plus hectares) of land that had been used for food production;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I c (new)
Recital I c (new)
Ic. whereas the structural connection between, on the one hand, land grabbing and the concentration of farmland ownership and, on the other, food insecurity, affects indigenous peoples particularly severely; whereas, according to the FAO, after 10 years in which the incidence of famine in the world has slowly declined, it is once again on the increase, with a rise in 2016 of 38 million in the number of people suffering from malnutrition worldwide, and children are particularly hard hit;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
L. whereas the obligation to protect and provide access to remedy under the European Convention on Human Rights applies both to extraterritorial activities and to domestic activities with extraterritorial impact; whereas the degree of commitment of the EU and its Member States to their extraterritorial obligations is currently very weak;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Calls on the EU, the Member States and their partners in the international community to adopt all necessary measures for the full recognition, protection and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples; welcomes the work that NGOs are doing on these issues both internationally and in the countries concerned;
Amendment 82 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls on the EU to make sure that all its development, investment and trade policies respect the human rights of indigenous peoples as enshrined in human rights treaties and conventions and in the legal instruments that deal with indigenous peoples’ rights in particular;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Appeals to all states that have not yet ratified ILO Convention No 169 1 c on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, and in particular to the EU and its Member States, to do so as quickly as possible, and calls on the EU to make every effort to support its ratification and implementation in all partner countries; _________________ 1c List of countries that have not ratified ILO Convention No 169: http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=N ORMLEXPUB:11310:0::NO:11310:P113 10_INSTRUMENT_ID:312314:NO
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls on the EU Member States and the European Union to support and vote in favour of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas that will be voted in 2018 in the UN Human Rights Council;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Urges the EU and its Member States to redouble their efforts in order to ensure the physical integrity and the legal assistance of indigenous, environmental and land rights defenders; to that end, asks for an assurance that the European Union Human Rights Defenders mechanism will be continued and for an increase in its funding so that it can address alarming developments in the situation of human rights defenders almost everywhere in the world, attaching particular importance to environmental activists and to those defending the rights of indigenous peoples, including their right to land;
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Denounces the continuing criminalisation of those who defend the rights of indigenous peoples, and the right to land, throughout the world; against this background, asks the European Union to use every available means to ensure the safety of the 2017 Sakharov Prize finalist and defender of indigenous peoples’ and environmental rights Lolita Chavez, who faces prosecution in some 10 cases in Guatemala, as well as multiple death threats;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Welcomes the International Criminal Court’s 2016 announcement that land grabbing and environmental destruction are the root causes of very many human rights violations and may henceforth bring charges of crimes against humanity;
Amendment 133 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Urges the EU and its Member States to monitor and publicly report the land acquisitions involving EU-based corporations and actors or EU-funded development projects in countries where such deals could result in the violation of human rights, instructing and capacitating EU Delegations; asks them, in association with the relevant NGOs, to be extra vigilant, including in ensuring, notably through use of the and embassies for that purposhoc mechanism, that human rights defenders are protected and safe;
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12a. Stresses, once again, the inalienable right of peoples, and particularly indigenous peoples, to their resources and lands; stresses therefore that the issue of food sovereignty, understood as ‘the right of populations, their states or union of states, to define their own agricultural and food policies, whilst avoiding dumping products in any other country’, is crucial in seeking to put an end to land grabbing and food insecurity and to guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples and the right to food, as set down in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that achieving that goal will mean moving away from the intensive farming and monocultures advocated by the agri-food sector, to the detriment of traditional farming, and developing partnerships based on the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals; calls, therefore on the Member States to work on a world food plan, under the guidance of the FAO and with resources from an agricultural assistance fund financed through a tax on agri-food companies; stresses that this clearly implies a shift away from a system of farming founded on commercial negotiations, and the conclusion of new cooperation-based agreements as part of a sustainable approach to the shared development of agriculture in a way that is respectful of people and the planet;
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 3
Subheading 3
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Recommends that the EU develops a European regional action plan for business and human rights, guided by the principles enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and calls for the development of national action plans focused on this issue;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Calls on the EU to set up a grievance mechanism whereby indigenous and local communities can lodge complaints regarding violations and abuses of their rights resulting from EU-based business activities or EU development or investment projects, regardless of the country where the violations and abuses occurred, in order to ensure that the victims have effective access to justice, as well as to technical and legal assistance; calls on the EU and the Member States to engage in the negotiations to adopt a legally binding international human rights instrument for transnational corporations and other companies; calls, in this context, on the EU to support the negotiations under way at UN level with a view to concluding a binding treaty on the liability of multinationals;
Amendment 167 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Calls on the EU to fulfil its extraterritorial duties related to human rights, and resolves to request legislative proposals from the Commission and to work together with the European Council to create legislation to prevent and sanction extraterritorial violations of the rights of indigenous peoples and of local communities;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 168 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 a (new)
Paragraph 17 a (new)
17a. Calls for the introduction of effective arrangements for monitoring, and imposing penalties on, EU companies established in third countries or any companies exporting products to the EU, with a view to ensuring the observance of human rights, and in particular indigenous peoples’ rights; calls specifically for the establishment of joint and several liability between contracting and subcontracting enterprises so that, regardless of the nationality of the subcontractor committing the illegal act, those affected can take action against the main company, whether in the country where the illegal act has been committed or in the main company’s country of origin (the country in which it has its seat); calls for the inclusion in all economic agreements between the Union and third countries of an ad hoc clause worded along the following lines: ‘Undertakings that invest in a third country shall have civil and criminal liability for crimes and infringements committed by them and by their directors, management and members of decision- making bodies – whether single-member or collegiate. The said liability shall extend not only to the act of committing offences but also to aiding and abetting, collaborating in or instigating them, as well as incitement to and concealment of offences, so as to establish joint and several liability between contracting and subcontracting enterprises and to enable those affected to take action against the main company’;
Amendment 171 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 4
Subheading 4
Sustainable development toand indigenous people
Amendment 173 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 4 a (new)
Subheading 4 a (new)
Highlighting the key role played by indigenous people, through their lifestyle and development models, in protecting the environment
Amendment 191 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Recommends that greater prominence be given to this issue in the EU’s foreign policy, including in its human rights dialogues with third countries, EU policy documents as well as in trade, cooperation and development agreements negotiated or concluded with other countries; calls on the EU and its Member States to take into account the result of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in order to ascertain the conformity of their policies with the rights of indigenous peoples;(Does not affect the English version.)
Amendment 200 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Calls on the EU to ensure that all EU-funded development projects that could in any way negatively affect the livelihoods, lands and resources of indigenous peoples rigorously comply with the principle of free, prior and informed consent;
Amendment 207 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Calls on the EU to establish the obligation to carry out impact assessment studies prior to the conclusion of trade and cooperation agreements and to the implementation of development projects, in order to measure and prevent their deleterious effects on the rights of indigenous and local communities, and to suspend the execution of such agreements and projects in the event of blatant violation of those rights;