Description
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is a democratic membership organization representing peoples' rights in international and national environments. The members of UNPO are indigenous peoples, occupied nations, minorities and independent states or territories who have joined together to protect their human rights, to preserve their environments and to find non-violent solutions to conflicts that affect them. UNPO provides an established international forum for Members' aspirations and assists them in effective participation at the international level. The members established and still run the organisation which follows the five principles that form the basis of the UNPO Charter:
- Non-violence;
- Human Rights;
- Self-determination and democracy;
- Environmental Protection;
- Tolerance.
Since the founding of UNPO, and after more than a decade's worth of work in world politics, six Members, Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, Palau and East Timor, have been admitted to the United Nations.
UNPO was established with the aim to support the members also in international fora, such as the United Nations, which is the key place where their concerns can be raised.
The primary objective of the UNPO program at the United Nations is to provide UNPO members with assistance in gaining access to and effectively using the different United Nations bodies such as the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the UN Human Rights Council.
UNPO has its headquarters in The Hague since 17 years. UNPO has an international network of consults and representatives in Belgium, Switzerland and the United States amongst others. UNPO does not have a department on environmental law since environmental issues are part of a general programme of human rights and democracy advocacy.
UNPO's mandate is to provide its Member s with access to the international fora, such as the agencies of the UN, which are intended to defend the rights of indigenous people, mitigate the effects of threats such as climate change and protect the natural environment. Environmental law is mentioned in the UNPO founding documents, namely the UNPO covenant .
UNPO is active on the following areas of law:
- highlighting infringements of international human rights law and redressing injustices that affect indigenous and marginalised people;
- currently engaged in a question of constitutional law regarding the land rights of the Rehoboth Basters in Namibia. UNPO has also worked closely with the Ogoni of the Niger Delta in campaigning for sustainable and equitable development of Nigeria's oil resources. Most recently this has involved publicising the continued and damaging policy of gas flaring in the Niger Delta;
- A UNPO conference held in Brussels on the issue of de facto states in May 2008 also brought to light elements and gaps in international law that affect UNPO members such as Abkhazia, Somaliland and Taiwan and which often have important environmental implications in cases of cross-border pollution, waste smuggling, and public health.
These are examples of topics UNPO hopes to address in the coming months with further events.
As stated above, UNPO's focus to date has been to campaign and raise awareness of environmental issues such as gas-flaring in the Niger Delta, flower cultivation in Ethiopia, unsustainable mining operations in Bougainville and West Papua, and the rights of indigenous people to fishing grounds in North America. This frequently involves bringing international attention to instances where environmental law is being contravened or implemented ineffectually.
UNPO could add to the city of The Hague the following:
In terms of development of international environmental law:
- With almost twenty years of experience in dealing with environmental issues from across the world, UNPO has a broad range of case study evidence to draw upon;
- Over this time UNPO has also built up a database of contacts that allow it to call upon a cross-discipline body of activists and academics when addressing environmental issues;
- Because UNPO Members live and work in areas of environmental concern, they are in a unique position to gauge the impact of environmental policy over the long-term and provide feedback for the development of future environmental law;
- Sharing case study experience between Members from across the world promotes cooperation, best practice, and showcases potential shortcomings in approaches to international environmental law and its application.
In terms of compliance with international environmental law:
- As noted above, UNPO is able, through its Membership, to maintain contacts in sensitive environmental areas not always open to international observers;
- This contact allows it to monitor the observance of international environmental law, escalate its Members� reports to international fora, and assess the level of compliance being given to international environmental law;
- UNPO ensures that the issues of compliance with international environmental law are kept in the public eye through its website, campaigns, and events;
- The documents associated with the UNPO website and campaigns constitute a record of compliance and associated case study evidence that serves to inform and support future compliance assessments carried out by UNPO;
- UNPO is also in a position to inform non-state actors and de facto states of the prevailing international environmental law trends � promoting the compliance of environmental law to those outside the formal, states-based, institutions
- UNPO has experience of providing activists with information and training - this could extend to alerting those living with the failures of international environmental law of the obligations their states should be observing, thus allowing local activists to judge, document and raise concern over environmental law contraventions.
In terms of enforcement of international environmental law:
- UNPO's documenting of compliance failures establishes a valuable catalogue of evidence that can be informative when considering the enforcement of international environmental law
- Publicising and documenting the costs of contravening international environmental law is an overlooked but important role UNPO is well-suited to perform and would be important in projecting the enforcement of international environmental law to a wide audience;
- In which way could your organisation benefit from the promotion of the city of The Hague in the field of the development, compliance and enforcement of international environmental law
UNPO could benefit from the promotion of The Hague in IEL by increasing its visibility at the international level and increasing its activities in IEL
IEL has an increasing importance for the following reasons:
- Increasing public awareness of international environmental law has been raised as the costs of environmental degradation begin to affect more people, especially those in the developed world;
- International environmental law has also taken on a new importance as the issues facing the world become increasingly transnational and states are less able to respond adequately to issues of pollution, the influence of transnational corporations, or resource scarcity;
- However the growing importance of international environmental law reflects the fact that it has been a long overlooked area of international law � it will be crucial to build upon this initial wave of interest and enthusiasm to develop instruments that meet the challenges of twenty-first century environmental threats.
Existing gaps in IEL:
- Unrecognised states such as Somaliland, Abkhazia, and Taiwan are major gaps in the existing environmental law provisions. International organisations find themselves unable to engage formally with these de facto states, despite the latter's internal capacity, simply because they lack international recognition;
- Meanwhile, mismanaged or kleptocratic states such as Nigeria and Burma/Myanmar exploit the resources at their disposal to the detriment of the people and often in contravention of international environmental norms because there is a distinct lack of meaningful international censure measures
- The failure to take into account the opinions of indigenous people in Chile, Ethiopia, and Vietnam in the face of large-scale dam construction programmes is a major oversight and risks damaging sites of important cultural significance and natural beauty
- Such serious failures alienate and disillusion those whom international environmental law is expected to protect and can encourage the adoption of illegal and destabilising responses to environmental threats.
Potential cases in IEL where gaps could emerge are:
Illegal cutting of forests
Illegal waste transport
Adverse effects of climate change (refugees of small islands)
Oil spills in case of war situations
Marine environment
Pollution caused by maritime transport (Ivory Coast case)
UNPO comments on these issues are:
- The illegal cutting of forests and transport of waste, and the adverse effects of climate change are the most important facing UNPO's Membership at the current time.
- Illegal deforestation remains a major gap in current international environmental law for a variety of reasons. These include state actor complicity in illegal logging in countries where an international sanctions regime, the presence of valuable hardwoods, cowed civil society, and rising commodity demand from regional neighbours combine to make the enforcement of international environmental law difficult. Burma/Myanmar is one such case
- De facto states such as Abkhazia and Somaliland are situated on some of the world' major crossroads between continents which leaves them at risk from the illegal transport of hazardous wastes. Although they possess the institutional infrastructure of a state, their lack of recognition on the international stage means that they are not party to international agreements and they are not consulted on issues such as illegal waste transport despite the fact that they are best placed and most at risk from the transport of such waste transport. International law needs to take into account the possibilities and capabilities these de facto states offer
- Rising sea levels around the islands of the Pacific Ocean is having the greatest impact on the lives of indigenous people. Often they live in the low-lying areas most affected and because of their economic marginalisation have the least means with which to respond to the challenges of climate change. In instances where indigenous people are internally displaced within a state, the avenues for redress and relief are often limited by prejudices and legal codes influenced by later settlers or migrants. International environmental law therefore has a key role to play in setting a legal standard for the protection of indigenous people when faced with the cultural, economic, and social costs of climate change.
These gaps exist because of the ongoing reliance on a states-based approach to international consultation and agreement formulation. Where this involves pariah states such as Burma/Myanmar or failed states such as Somalia the regimes involved are frequently ambivalent, knowing that little can be done to ensure compliance or enforcement of international environmental law. Moreover, this approach prevents de facto states such as Abkhazia, Somaliland, and Taiwan from engaging with established states and international institutions chiefly the United Nations and its agencies, in meaningful discussions. This approach has thus ignored the new threats and opportunities introduced by globalisation. These changes no longer respect state borders or controls, still less where such borders or controls are only nominal.
The Hague could address these issues because is uniquely placed to attract environmental legal expertise to discuss and debate the ways forward for international environmental law. The existing legal expertise and resources provides The Hague with an opportunity to work across legal disciplines to generate new thinking on questions of environmental law. Armed conflict in the twenty-first century will be characterised by the increasing demand for access to natural resources like minerals or water. These conflicts are likely to be intra-state, low-level and potentially destabilising. The Hague is in a position to raise the profile of these issues, highlighting how much conflict and the international system has altered since the 1899 Peace Conference. This is an especially important role to adopt when commodity price increases and doubts over the state of the world's economy are drawing attentions away from the environmental issues that underpin some of these very problems.
Categories
Non Governmental Organisation