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Special Issues for the 60th Session
of the UN Commission
on Human Rights (excerpt from a report by the Asian Centre
for Human Rights (ACHR) - 31.03.2004)
During the 4th week (5-9 April
2004), the 60th session of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is
scheduled to consider the agenda items relating to vulnerable
groups: children, minorities, migrant workers, internally
displaced persons, indigenous peoples and persons with
disabilities. A few other issues raise questions about the role of
United Nations bodies as these vulnerable groups do.
The CHR needs to recommend
extension of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous
People due to lack of progress on indigenous issues. Although the
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has been established, the
future of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations is caught in
a short fuse. In the last seven years not a single article of the
Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been
adopted. For adoption of the Draft Declaration, indigenous
peoples will have to drop the idea of "no change", just
as governments will have to give up the idea that they can
bludgeon the indigenous peoples to accept the notion that there
are no collective rights in
international law.
Source: http://www.achrweb.org/features/ACHRF14-04.htm
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