Indigenous Peoples Project - Geneva for Human Rights

15/04/2026

25/03/2026

Women and men see the world differently.

We often talk about urban safety in terms of lighting and infrastructure. But a new study reveals that the gap between men and women isn't just about physical safety - it's about perception.

Researchers surveyed 571 college students across four Utah campuses, using heat maps to track where participants focused their attention when imagining a walk alone. The results were striking:

- Different foci: Male participants predominantly focused on the walking path ahead. Female participants consistently highlighted areas outside the path - bushes, shadows, and dark corners.

- The night factor: This divergence widened significantly at night. Women were far more likely to flag areas outside the path during nighttime and high-entrapment settings (areas where escape is difficult).

- Statistical reality: The structural similarity between male and female heat maps was low, indicating that men and women are essentially scanning the same environment for entirely different threats.

Why this matters:

This isn't just about avoiding crime. When half your population is constantly scanning for hidden risks, their freedom of movement - and consequently their physical and mental health - is compromised.

The study suggests that simply adding streetlights isn't enough.

We need to design spaces that account for the "lived experience" of safety, recognizing that women’s vigilance is often a rational response to disproportionate risk (women aged 18–24 are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than other age groups).

Holistic community safety requires more than reactionary apps or better bulbs. It demands that we view walking spaces through the lens of those who feel most vulnerable. When we design for the most cautious walker, we create safer spaces for everyone.

Have you noticed differences in how people navigate shared spaces? What urban design changes would make you feel safer?

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Ready to turn these insights into policy?

Join us at the 13th World Urban Forum (WUF13). This is where global leaders, urban planners, and communities converge to co-create inclusive, safe, and resilient cities for everyone.

📅 Register now: https://wuf.unhabitat.org/ Let's build spaces where no one has to scan for shadows to feel safe.

18/02/2026

It was a real pleasure spending time with UN Special Rapporteur Astrid Puentes Riaño, currently on an official visit to Ireland, and former President Mary Robinson yesterday. Two powerful voices for climate justice/environment and human rights.

18/02/2026

support to indigenous peoples.
you are not alone.

14/02/2026

'car rally colonialism'

21/01/2026

📢 announcement!

The Programme of Work for the 25th Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is now available on our website in English, and will soon be available in all six official UN languages!

👉 Check it out here: https://bit.ly/UNPFII2026

📷 UN DESA/Predrag Vasić

19/01/2026

🌍 TWO WORLD VISIONS, ONE SHARED PROTECTION SYSTEM

Book Launch: The Value of Human Rights Treaties and Their Supervisory Bodies

For Indigenous Peoples across the world, human rights treaties represent more than legal instruments.

They are bridges between world visions, connecting lived and experienced realities with international law, linking systems of values that may differ in expression but share fundamental commitments to dignity, justice and the protection of future generations.

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Two-Eyed Seeing / Etuaptmumk in Practice

The concept of seeing with two eyes, one through Indigenous knowledge systems, one through Western legal frameworks, recognizes that neither vision alone is complete.

Human rights treaty bodies, when they function well, create space where:

✅ Indigenous laws and international law can inform each other without one erasing the other
✅ Lived experience becomes authoritative evidence, not secondary to expert testimony
✅ Collective rights and individual rights are understood as complementary, not competing
✅ Spiritual relationships with land, water and non-human life are recognized as rights, not cultural curiosities
✅ Self-determination is affirmed as the foundation for all other rights

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📚 Why This Book Matters for Indigenous Communities:

The Value of Human Rights Treaties and Their Supervisory Bodies, launched on 20 January 2026, examines all UN and regional human rights treaties, including mechanisms specifically designed to protect Indigenous rights.

This 700-page volume, published under the auspices of Geneva for Human Rights - Global Training & Policy Studies & Indigenous Peoples Project - Geneva for Human Rights, serves as:

✅ A navigation tool for Indigenous Peoples engaging with treaty bodies (CERD, CESCR, HRCttee, CEDAW and others) on issues of land rights, cultural survival, Free Prior and Informed Consent, self-identification and self-determination

✅ A translation bridge that makes complex legal processes accessible while respecting the integrity of Indigenous knowledge systems

✅ A protection resource documenting decades of jurisprudence on Indigenous rights, including decisions that have prevented forced displacement, protected sacred sites, affirmed language rights, and recognized Indigenous legal systems

✅ An intergenerational transmission tool ensuring Elders' knowledge and youth movements' energy are both reflected in how these mechanisms are understood and used

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🛡️ When Systems Connect, Protection Strengthens

Treaty bodies work best when they hold space for multiple world visions simultaneously:

🌱 When Indigenous cosmologies inform understanding of environmental rights and intergenerational obligations

🌱 When community-based decision-making is recognized as legitimate governance, not obstacle to State authority

🌱 When relationship to land is understood as constitutive of identity, not merely economic interest

🌱 When spiritual harm is acknowledged as real violation, not metaphorical suffering

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This book documents how these connections have been made—and where they still need strengthening.

🌱 The Threats We Face Together
Today, treaty bodies themselves are under attack. The same forces that threaten Indigenous lands, languages and livelihoods also seek to weaken the international mechanisms that provide accountability when States violate Indigenous rights.

If treaty bodies disappear or lose independence:

📍 There will be fewer pathways to challenge mega-projects on Indigenous territories
📍 States will face less scrutiny when they fail to obtain Free Prior and Informed Consent
📍 Jurisprudence protecting cultural rights, language revitalization and Indigenous governance will stop developing
📍 The space for Indigenous knowledge to inform international law will shrink further

This cannot stand.

📅 Join the Dialogue
Tuesday, 20 January 2026 | 15:00–18:00 CET
📍 Conference Room, Ground Fl., 1 rue de Varembé, 1202 GE

or online: https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/63157906702

followed by an informal reception @ 18:00

🌐 Hybrid format — accessible online globally
We invite Indigenous representatives, scholars, youth, Elders, legal practitioners and allied communities to join a forward-looking dialogue on:

📍 How treaty bodies can better hold space for Indigenous world visions
📍 How Indigenous knowledge strengthens human rights protection for everyone
📍 How to defend these mechanisms when they face existential threats

When we protect the systems that protect us, we protect the land, the water, the languages, the future generations.

Knowledge becomes protection. Connection becomes resistance.

👉 Register: [email protected]

Published under the auspices of Geneva for Human Rights (gva4HR)
Editors: Bertrand Ramcharan, Inès French, Orest Nowosad, Jennifer Philpot-Nissen, Ekkehard Strauss
















United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
UNPO
Docip
UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples
Survival International
UPR Info
Centre for Civil and Political Rights

09/01/2026

Your Voice Matters: UN Call for Input on the Right to Seeds

Together, we can ensure the right to seeds is grounded in lived realities and serves those who need it most.

You don't need to be a lawyer or expert—your lived experience is expertise. We're here to help you share it.

The UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas is seeking contributions on the right to seeds under Article 19 of UNDROP.

This is a unique opportunity for farmers, Indigenous Peoples, seed-keepers, rural workers, women's organizations, researchers and civil society to directly inform international human rights standards.

Why this matters:
Seeds are not just biological material, they are the foundation of food security, cultural heritage, biodiversity, and self-determination for billions.

Yet seed systems worldwide face criminalisation, corporate concentration, and the exclusion of those who depend on them most.

Geneva for Human Rights stands ready to support you.

We offer:
✅ Submission guidance and simplified question guides
✅ Technical assistance (30-60 minute consultations)
✅ Connection to human rights frameworks
✅ Resource materials and examples

Key details:
📅 Deadline: February 19, 2026
📧 Submit to: [email protected]
🔗 Official call: https://lnkd.in/er2v3Jj3

You don't need to be a lawyer or expert—your lived experience is expertise. We're here to help you share it.

Contact us:
📞 +41 22 320 27 27
📧 [email protected]

Together, we can ensure the right to seeds is grounded in lived realities and serves those who need it most.

Geneva for Human Rights - Global Training & Policy Studies
Peoples Project

17/12/2025

Self-Identification as Being: Ontology as the Foundation of Indigenous Self-Recognition

Self-identification without ontology is classification.
Self-identification with ontology is recognition of being.

For Indigenous Peoples, self-identification must be ontological.
If it is not ontological, it is not self-recognition.

Ontological self-identification refers to identity as being/beingness, rooted in lived existence, relational belonging, cosmology, land, language, kinship, memory and continuity across generations.

It is not a label chosen for convenience, access or status; it is an expression of existence and continuity.

Non-ontological identification (administrative, performative, strategic or externally validated) reduces identity to a category.

Such reduction transforms self-identification into recognition by others (states, institutions, markets) rather than recognition of oneself as a people.

Self-recognition precedes recognition.

Ontological self-identification exists independently of state acknowledgment, registries or any legal thresholds.

External recognition may affirm or deny rights, but it does not constitute identity.

Collective dimension is essential.

Ontological self-identification is not purely individualistic; it is embedded in collective existence and intergenerational continuity.

Without this collective grounding, “self-identification” becomes atomised and detachable from peoplehood.

Anchored in normative consistency with international law, self-identification is not symbolic.

UNDRIP affirms that Indigenous Peoples have the right to determine their own identity and membership in accordance with their customs and traditions (Article 33). This presupposes an ontological basis not an administrative one.

ILO Convention No. 169 recognises self-identification as a fundamental criterion but within a context of historical continuity and collective identity, again, ontological, not opportunistic.

Non-recognition of self-identification leads to denial of identities, individual or collective.

Where self-identification is treated as a mere subjective declaration, a policy category or a legal checkbox, it ceases to be self-recognition and becomes external capture of identity.

Ontological grounding is therefore not philosophical excess; it is a safeguard against dilution, misappropriation and depoliticisation of Indigenous peoples’ existence.

To wrap up:
Self-identification without ontology is classification.
Self-identification with ontology is recognition of being.

05/12/2025

Research on Sámi reconciliation and youth

Academic and NGO work on Sámi reconciliation notes that younger generations often foreground climate justice, digital rights and intersectional discrimination, while elders focus more on boarding-school trauma, church complicity and specific land dispossessions.

Interpreting generational influence (with caution)

Given the evidence, a cautious reading (not a quantified one) suggests that Gen Z & Millennials appear to push for:

- Linking reconciliation to future-oriented structural change (stronger self-government, climate-just land use, robust FPIC) rather than purely retrospective truth-telling.

- Cross-border Sápmi framing (Norway, Sweden, Russia), digital mobilisation, and alignment with global Indigenous youth and climate movements.

Older generations (based on testimonies and UN expert descriptions) emphasise:

Boarding-school assimilation, language loss and church/state policies but often experienced over several decades.

Specific property and livelihood losses (Lokka, Porttipahta, Tana, Inari, forestry, reindeer husbandry) and the continuity of those harms into retirement age.

The final report’s proposals combine both lenses: long historical accounting (“The Past”), current structural discrimination and land-use conflicts (“The Present”), and systemic reforms (State Secretary, FPIC, language and youth measures) under “The Future”.

Where the generational impact is most visible is arguably:

- The insistence on permanent psychosocial support (Uvjj–Uvjâ–Uvja) and youth-friendly mental-health services as a condition for safe truth-telling and post-report follow-up, pushed strongly by the Sámi Parliament and youth/women advocates.

What Sáttanuorat (Saami Council's cross-border youth project ) actually say in their TRC reflection (Sept 2025)

Key elements, in their own framing (paraphrased):

• Hope + conditions
They say the meeting 'gave… insight into the reconciliation process, as well as hope for our future,' but immediately add that 'the hardest work is yet to be done' and that reconciliation must translate into concrete actions and commitments toward Sámi self-determination.

• Land, reindeer herding and extractivism
They highlight specific sites , Riehpovuotna and Gállok, as examples where communities are defending reindeer herding, fjords and lands from toxic mine waste and mineral exploitation. These are explicitly presented as tests of whether reconciliation is real or only rhetorical.

• Green transition - EU dimension
They stress that across Sápmi 'communities face similar pressures from extractive industries, often backed by national governments and the European Union,' framing mining as structured by the EU green-transition agenda and the Critical Raw Materials logic rather than as purely national issues.

• Intergenerational lens
They explicitly carry 'the stories of our elders shared with the Commission' , but insist that reconciliation must not 'only look backward'; it must also create space for young Sámi because they are 'living the consequences of colonial policies right now'.

• Transnational Sápmi
They underline that reconciliation 'cannot be achieved in one part of our homelands alone,' that 'the struggles we face do not stop at national borders,' and that reconciliation must 'embrace all of Sápmi,' with a wish one day to be reunited with Sámi across the Russian border.

• Vision statement
Their closing vision links self-determination, language and land: a future where Sámi culture thrives, languages are heard and spoken, and 'the land, and not our wounds, will be there for us to pass on to our children.'

This is consistent with the way Saami Council at 'adult' level talks about the EU Critical Raw Materials Act and 'green colonialism', mining framed as both a climate policy tool and a rights threat for reindeer herders and land-based livelihoods.

the TRC report itself is only being handed over one day ago, on 4 December 2025 and has just appeared; any youth reaction to the content of the report will necessarily come later.

@ Geneva for Human Rights - Global Training & Policy Studies & @ Indigenous Peoples Project - Geneva for Human Rights

we look forward to listen to this voices to support them shape the future they self-determine.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report lists 70 recommendations on how Finland can improve its relationship with the Sámi people.

14/11/2025

This week on 11 November, the Third Committee of the 80th session of the General Assembly adopted the draft resolution, "The Rights of Indigenous Peoples".

The resolution was approved by vote and among other issues:

-Suggests that the Commission on the Status of Women consider, in a future session, the issue of gender equality and the empowerment of Indigenous women and girls as a priority theme.
-Recalls its previous resolution deciding to organize a high-level panel to be held during the high-level week of the 82nd session of the General Assembly, in 2027, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the UNDRIP
-Decides to initiate, a high-level panel discussion on the organization of the Second World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, to be held in 2028, and invites the President of the General Assembly, at its eighty-first session, to conduct open-ended consultations with Member States and representatives of Indigenous Peoples within the framework of the UNPFII, EMRIP and the Special Rapporteur, in order to determine the modalities for the meeting, including the participation of Indigenous Peoples in the Conference.
-Calls upon the relevant States to recognize, respect and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact, and to respect the principle of no contact, where applicable.

More info on this resolution and to watch the session on UN WebTV, visit the link: https://tinyurl.com/3kueef6n