An indigenous rights protest. Photo: Flickr user KeithBacongo

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, laying out the fundamental rights of the more than 370 million indigenous people living throughout the world.

The Declaration’s main goals are to protect the traditional lands of indigenous communities, as well as their right to self-government and control over natural resources. It also aims to safeguard cultural independence.

The United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia — the four English-speaking nations with significant indigenous populations — were the only countries to vote against the Declaration. Recently, Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reversed this decision and signed the document.

During Worldfocus’ series on Indigenous Cultures, we have shown the severe threats facing native communities across the world. For more on the issue, Jamie Macfarlane interviewed Renee Davis and Tiffany Waters, research associates at the Center for World Indigenous Studies.

Worldfocus: Has the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People made a meaningful difference to the lives of indigenous communities around the globe?

Davis: The Declaration holds meaning in setting a standard of Indigenous sovereignty over their lands and resources and to self determination. However, at this point, the Declaration holds more meaning as a standard to be embraced than a legally enforceable document.

Worldfocus: Why do the United States, Canada and New Zealand refuse to sign the Declaration?

Davis: While Australia has recently overturned their opposition to the Declaration, the United States of America, Canada and New Zealand say they oppose the Declaration for various reasons.

Much of the opposition from the US, Canada, and New Zealand surrounds Articles 3 and 26, in which the inherent right to self-determination and control over Indigenous resources and lands are recognized, and Article 32, in which it is required that the State Government obtain an Indigenous peoples “free and informed consent” before exploiting resources or lands that affect Indigenous peoples.

One analyst, Ronald Kakungulu (2009), has suggested that there is a fundamental reason for opposition that joins these three states: “They have a history of using the now discredited doctrines of discovery and terra nullius (empty land) to grab indigenous people’s lands.”

Worldfocus: How does the treatment of Native Americans in the United States compare to the treatment of indigenous peoples in other English-speaking nations?

Davis: We can’t answer in a “better/worse than” way. Structurally, these States have similar relationships with their indigenous populations: treaties, trust relationships, etc. But there is something that does stand out. Compared to the other English-speaking countries, American Indians have a much greater bureaucratic interface with the federal government, cultivated over the last 40 years of American tribes assuming more functions of the federal government in their own communities.

Worldfocus: Are there examples of Indigenous self-government that you see as models that could be introduced across the world?

Davis: We don’t see one broad model of indigenous self-government that could be applicable worldwide. With so many culturally diverse societies, we can’t expect there to be one single way in which self-government emerges.

A structure of self-governance has to come from within and be built on a peoples own place and culture specific foundations. Thus, we cannot point to one particular group and take them as an example of successful self-government to be applied worldwide.

However, we can look at what qualities and characteristics can facilitate an indigenous nation’s strength: it must build and assert its political authority, formulate its own policies, laws, regulations and standards, and have Indigenous and tribal leaders that can maintain political flexibility and agility in a constantly shifting and changing world.

- Jamie Macfarlane

The joint raid conducted by U.S. and Pakistani special forces suggests a change in tactics by Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence service. For years ISI was reluctant to target the Taliban, a movement initially cultivated by Pakistan to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan.

For more, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official who is now with the Asia Society and the Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University’s South Asian Institute.

Israeli soldiers on leave in the city of Jaffa. Photo: Mohammad Al-Kassim

Talk about war is getting louder in the Middle Eastern press, with many speculating about a possible outbreak of hostilities not only between Israel and Hamas, but Israel and Syria, or Iran and a host of adversaries.

In a column in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Bradley Burston writes, “The countdown to the Second Gaza War has begun in earnest.”

The peace process is widely believed to be at an impasse, and there are other significant developments as well.

This week Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak publicly warned Hamas “to watch its step,” while senior Hamas and other Palestinian factions are warning of another Israeli offensive on Gaza.

And last week Hamas blamed Israel’s Mossad for the killing of one of its a top commanders in Dubai, UAE, and vowed revenge.

The Israeli Air Force has stepped up its bombing of tunnels in Gaza and is reacting with airstrikes every time a rocket is launched out of Gaza towards Israel.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, two Palestinian factions claimed responsibility for planting two barrels of explosives that washed up in an Israeli port, marking a new tactic and an escalation of the conflict.

This week the top news out of Iran concerns the deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems off Iran’s coast in the gulf, leading to rising tensions with Tehran.

Some experts say heavyweight Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen over Iran’s alleged support of the rebels there.

Israel could in theory find itself in a war on multiple fronts. Earlier this week in a bold statement, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said war with Syria was inevitable, and added that Iran is still a central danger to Israel’s security and all options are still on the table in how Israel deals with Iran.

Just last week, the London based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Syria has called up its reserve military forces in anticipation of a full-scale war with Israel.

In Lebanon, the Secretary General of Hezbollah– the Lebanese Shi’a Islamist political and paramilitary group — Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, said his forces will “change the face of the Middle East region” if there is another war with Israel. The last time Israel and Hezbollah clashed was in the summer of 2006 and that war lasted for 34 days.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

An estimated 50,000 are feared dead in the aftermath of a 7.0-magnitude quake Tuesday evening.

The U.S. has promised to send $100 million in aid, and aid teams from the U.K., France, Spain and China have arrived recently in the country.

For more about relief efforts, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Michael Kocher, vice president of international programs for the International Rescue Committee.

What role should the United States play in rebuilding Haiti?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Photo: Al Jazeera

Mohammad Al-Kassim is a producer with Worldfocus.

It took an incident like the Christmas day failed bombing of the Delta/Northwest airliner to bring Yemen to the forefront of the news in the U.S.

It was Yemen where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allegedly trained by al-Qaeda. Currently Yemen offers al-Qaeda the perfect environment to reorganize and reinvent itself, and that’s precisely why the world’s focus is now shifting to the small Arabian Peninsula nation.

It’s not news to many that Yemen has been a safe haven for al-Qaeda for many years. Yemen has a weak centralized government, tough terrain and rugged mountains — and a severely fragmented tribal population with little loyalty to the government.

Also, let’s not forget that Osama Bin Laden’s family was originally from Yemen, and the al-Qaeda mastermind still enjoys wide support there.

Last week, General David Petraeus visited the Yemeni capital of Sana’a for a meeting with President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Petraeus delivered a message of support from President Obama to the Yemeni president and told him the U.S. is pledging military aid to Yemen.

Meanwhile British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a conference on terrorism to be held in Yemen at the end of this month. Officially, the Yemeni government is a close ally of the U.S. And it’s one of the world’s poorest countries despite being a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, which is the world’s largest oil exporters and among the region’s richest.

Internally, the weak central Yemeni government has its hands full. For the last six years, the Yemeni army have been engaged in a de facto civil war in the North with a Shi’a rebel group called the Houthis. Yemen’s government accuses the group of being loyal to Iran and receiving weapons from them. Fighting has escalated since last August.

Saudi Arabia’s army was sucked into the conflict when the Saudi government accused the Houthis of crossing the border and attacking a Saudi patrol. A short war ensued between Saudi Arabia and the rebels. Some experts - including Worldfocus contributing blogger Dwight Bashir - argue that Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

The government also faces a strong secessionist movement in the south over perceived northern exploitation of its resources, as I reported last fall. Another problem facing Yemen is the influx of African refugees, mainly Somalis, who cross the Gulf of Aden to escape the failed Somali state. Al-Shabaab militants from Somalia have also threatened to join with al-Qaeda in the impoverished Arabian country.

The failed Christmas day bombing brought Yemen and its myriad problems forcefully to the forefront of the world’s headlines. Unfortunately, the Western media was reacting to events rather anticipating them. Hardly any Western news outlets had a real presence there until the Christmas attack.

It’s disturbing that it took such an event to shine the spotlight on Yemen. The crucial country should have been on the radar long ago.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

Today, a spokesperson for the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying a Taliban bomber wearing an Afghan military uniform — and a suicide vest — entered the base last night and blew himself up.

Jeff Stein, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and author of the blog “Spy Talk,” joins Martin Savidge from Washington D.C. to discuss the CIA’s role in Afghanistan.

‘The Stans’ are the five post-Soviet Central Asian republics — Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — with similar historical, political and cultural roots.

These nations are asserting their cultural identity by proposing ethnic language policies — potentially banning the use of the Russian language.

In Kyrgyzstan, there’s a proposal to make Kyrgyz the dominant governmental language, and in Tajikistan, there’s another to ban the use of Russian in public institutions and official documents.

This week, Chinese President Hu Jintao opened a new gas pipeline that extends from Turkmenistan to north-west China — the first without Russia’s Gazprom.

Martin Savidge hosts William Fierman, a professor of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, and Nikolay Petrov, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Ethnic map of Central Asia. View a larger version by Pmx

They discuss:

• Common political, cultural and historical roots but not a homogeneous entity
• Post-Soviet relationships between ‘The Stans’ and Russia — how ethnic tensions and discrimination continue
• Economic crisis, drug trafficking, oil and migration
• How Russia, China and the United States are vying for ‘The Stans’
• Political instability and poor economic well-being raise concerns about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
• Could Central Asia become the next conflict zone — even the next Afghanistan?

GUESTS:
Nikolay Petrov is a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He has served in the Supreme Soviet and Russian Presidential Administration. Nikolay writes a regular column for The Moscow Times.

William Fierman is a professor of Central Asian studies at Indiana University. His research focuses on the politics of Central Asia, especially policies affecting language, Islam and state identities. He’s currently researching language politics and problems in Kazakhstan.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Christine Kiernan, Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven
Researcher: Michael Ramirez

Listen to Martin Savidge host Worldfocus Radio — Red China Goes Green. He is joined by Greenpeace China’s Rashid Kang in Beijing and the Center for American Progress‘ Julian Wong in Washington D.C.

Should China get international financial aid for its efforts to curb pollution?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

A recent report found that China is the world’s leading renewable energy producer.

Daljit Dhaliwal speaks to Emma Duncan, deputy editor of the Economist, about the future of green growth around the globe.

Is the United States lagging too far behind other countries in developing renewable energy sources and businesses?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Susumu Awanohara, an expert on U.S.-Japan relations with Medley Global Advisors, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the challenges Japan’s new leadership faces and the evolving relationship between Japan and the U.S.

In a country where a woman is confined to her home, Joya is breaking all kinds of cultural, social and religious stereotypes. In May 2007, she was suspended after referring to the parliament as a stable, she said at least in “in a stable we have animals like a cow which is useful in that it provides milk and a donkey that carry a load.”

She speaks candidly about the challenges facing Afghanistan. She says that the low turnout in the presidential election is proof that the Afghan people are dissatisfied with the current government. She attributes the rise of Taliban to the failed policy of the U.S. in Afghanistan. She is also a staunch opponent of increasing U.S. troop levels in her country. Joya wants the U.S. and NATO to keep in mind that no foreign military has ever succeeded in controlling Afghanistan.

For her, the status of women now is no different than under the Taliban. She says that it may even be worse because the rate of suicide and abduction is high, and many rapists go untouched.

Because she is unabashedly outspoken, her life is under constant threat and she must be accompanied by bodyguards. But nothing so far seems to succeed in slowing her down. For sure not the many failed assassination attempts on her life, or the awful treatment she gets from her male colleagues in parliament.

Joya spent her childhood at a refugee camp in Iran and Pakistan, and returned to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s and worked for an underground organization helping women. She is now on a book tour in the U.S.  promoting her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out, co-written by Derrick O’Keefe.

- Mohammad Al Kassim

Tarek Bazley of Al Jazeera English reports from Baghdad.

If the security situation is not stable, should the United States withdraw its troops anyway?

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A Mexico city statue during the early days of swine flu. Photo: Flickr user olivcris

With concerns rising in the U.S. and abroad about the H1N1 virus, we want to hear your thoughts.

Do you think the U.S. government is doing enough to protect American citizens from H1N1?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

A young Iranian woman. Photo: Flickr user mailo

Iran faces stiffer economic sanctions if it fails to follow through on a tentative plan to move most of its enriched uranium out of the country. This relocation could placate key Western nations by delaying Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. Yet, Iran continues to issue veiled threats that it could back away from talks if unhappy with the results.

Do you think that Iran can be trusted to make good on its promise to take concrete steps aimed at reducing tensions over its nuclear program?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

It collects surplus medical supplies — such as hospital beds from a facility that is upgrading — and ships them to Africa.

Dalijit Dhaliwal spoke last week with Doc to Dock’s founder, Dr. Bruce Charash.  He says the supplies are desperately needed in a continent where some hospitals are so ill-equipped that women give birth on the floor.

An Afghan villager in late 2008. Photo: Flickr user RugNug

S. Azmat Hassan is a career diplomat and former ambassador of Pakistan, where his postings have included Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco, and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in New York. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University.

On how to proceed in Afghanistan: Obama should make haste slowly. He is being pulled in different directions, which is not unusual in American politics. Kennedy was pressured by his senior military commanders to preemptively attack Russian missile sites in Cuba, which he rejected. Instead, he wisely chose diplomacy. He averted a possible nuclear holocaust in the aftermath of which the living if any would have envied the dead. Truman dismissed MacArthur, a general with a big ego, who advised him to nuke China to stop their advance in the Korean War.

Obama should strictly order the US commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal, to observe military protocol by not courting the media to publicize his recommendation for 40,000 additional troops. He should go through the military chain of command instead of trying to become a military prima donna. The buck stops with Obama- the Commander-in-Chief.

Since time immemorial, no foreign army has won in Afghanistan. Alexander, arguably the greatest military commander of all time, and more recently the mighty British and the Soviet armies, all experienced humiliating reverses in Afghanistan. The US Army supported by some NATO forces, has been trying for 8 years to defeat a ragtag militia calling itself the Taliban. They have failed. One does not have to be a military genius to figure out that when the combination of the forces opposing you is in the ascendant; it is time to give up the military option. The Taliban have the advantages of geography, history and resolve to attenuate and outlast the US forces-whom they consider foreign invaders.

Throwing in more troops is not likely to alter the current military equation. In today’s world where asymmetric warfare has demonstrated that a $20 improvised explosive device can destroy humvees and armored personnel carriers costing millions, the military calculus is weighted in favor of the local resistance. It is a resistance, moreover, which is hugely reinforced by an apparently inexhaustible supply of suicide bombers who can wreak havoc among both the military and civilians.

Those who recommend military escalation are still hoping for a military victory. Their rationale for pursuing the military option is the wrongheaded conflation of the Taliban with al-Qaeda. No such partnership is discernible today in Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was overthrown by the US in 2001 for being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. They are unlikely to make the same mistake twice. American analysts themselves admit that al-Qaeda is down to around 100 adherents in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda is thus highly unlikely to be in a position to launch another 9/11 or any operation approaching it. Mullah Omar has publicly proclaimed that his fight is not against the West. It is against foreign military forces and the ineffectual and corrupt Karzai regime which stands further delegitimized in the eyes of many Afghans as well as many in the international community, for blatantly rigging the recent general election. Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires. It would be prudent for Obama who is considered an astute politician, not to fall further in this bottomless pit like the others before him.

So what can be done? The US must initiate a dialogue with the Taliban beginning with their leader Mullah Omar. A senior British diplomat whom I had invited recently to lecture to my class told them that at the height of the British conflict with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the British kept up contacts with them. When the IRA was ready to talk with the British authorities, they utilized an already established channel of communication.

Today the centuries old Anglo-Irish problem is largely resolved. Regrettably, the US has not evolved politically to set up such mechanisms with its antagonists such as the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hizbullah and Hamas. They have forgotten British Foreign Secretary’s Lord Palmerston’s sage advice tendered 150 years ago: in international relations there are no permanent friends or enemies- only interests. Today it is patently in America’s interest to explore the diplomatic option in Afghanistan as the military option has failed. It is the road to a dead end.

- S. Azmat Hassan

Today in the Swat Valley within 100 miles of the Pakistani capital city of Islamabad, at least 41 people were killed. Today’s incident came as the Taliban claimed responsibility for a separate weekend attack on a Pakistani army facility that killed dozens more.

Should the United States send even more money to Pakistan to try to quell the violence there?

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U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” His selection has generated broad reaction around the world, much of it — but not all — positive.

In the Middle East, Israel’s President Shimon Peres said he was encouraged. But in Gaza, the prime minister of the militant group Hamas said the United States needs to do more.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said the award “speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope.”

Should the Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded to President Obama?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.