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ABSTRACT
The 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) represented a watershed moment for Indigenous rights. Though wide-ranging in scope, a core element of UNDRIP is the recognition of rights to land; specifically, the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) embedded in the Declaration. Given the widespread scale of insecurity and conflicts over land facing Indigenous peoples, FPIC represents a critical yet controversial development. This paper explores the links between UNDRIP/FPIC and land conflict in a unique context – sub-Saharan Africa. Notwithstanding the dismissive position of numerous African governments that ‘we are all Indigenous’, divisive debates around the politics of indigeneity are on the rise. Such debates regularly invoke the exclusionary concept of autochthony and centre on competing claims to rights to land. The paper thus considers the following questions: How have African governments responded to UNDRIP? What are the politics around applying the concept of Indigenous rights in the African context? Finally, could the right to FPIC provide a framework for preventing or possibly fuelling conflicts over land? By surveying key developments across the continent, the paper provides an African perspective on the promise and perils of UNDRIP.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Matthew I. Mitchell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research interests include African politics, global indigenous politics, land tenure reform, natural resource governance, peacebuilding, and political violence.
Davis Yuzdepski is an MA Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University, Canada. His research interests include elections, democratic theory, development, the politics of climate change, and environmental justice.
Notes
1. Sheryl Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2016).
2. United Nations, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, GA Res 61/295, UN Doc A/RES/71/1, 2007.
3. Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, State of the World's Indigenous Peoples (New York: United Nations, 2009).
4. Mauro Barelli, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent in the Aftermath of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Developments and Challenges Ahead’, The International Journal of Human Rights 16, no. 1 (2012): 1–24.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. Catherine Boone, Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Kathleen Klaus and Matthew I. Mitchell, ‘Land Grievances and the Mobilization of Electoral Violence: Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya’, Journal of Peace Research 52, no. 5 (2015): 622–35; Mathis Van Leeuwen and Gemma Van der Haar, ‘Theorizing the Land-Violent Conflict Nexus’, World Development 78 (2016): 94–104.
7. Jon Unruh and Rhodri C. Williams, eds., Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (New York: Routledge, 2013).
8. Michael Albertus and Oliver Kaplan, ‘Land Reform as a Counterinsurgency Policy: Evidence from Columbia’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, no. 2 (2012): 198–231; Andrea Collins and Matthew I. Mitchell, ‘Revisiting the World Bank's Land Law Reform Agenda: The Promise and Perils of Customary Practices’, Journal of Agrarian Change 18, no. 1 (2018): 112–31.
9. Dorothy Hodgson, ‘Becoming Indigenous in Africa’, African Studies Review 52, no. 3 (2009): 1–32.
10. Nigel Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011): 11–36.
11. Bambi Ceuppens and Peter Geschiere, ‘Autochthony: Local or Global? New Modes in the Struggle over Citizenship and Belonging in Africa and Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 385–407; Morten Bøås and Kevin Dunn, Politics of Origin in Africa: Autochthony, Citizenship and Conflict (London: Zed Books, 2013); Claire L. Adida, Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Edmond J. Keller, Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict in Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014).
12. Stephen Jackson, ‘Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D. R. Congo’, African Studies Review 49, no. 2 (2006): 95–123; Peter Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Matthew I. Mitchell, ‘Migration, Citizenship and Autochthony: Strategies and Challenges for State-Building in Côte d’Ivoire’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 30, no. 2 (2012): 267–87.
13. Quentin Gausset, Justin Kendrick, and Robert Gibb, ‘Indigeneity and Autochthony: A Couple of False Twins?’, Social Anthropology 19, no. 2 (2011): 135–42.
14. Catherine Boone, ‘Property and Constitutional Order: Land Tenure Reform and the Future of the African State’, African Affairs 106, no. 425 (2007): 557–86; Liz Alden Wily, ‘“The Law is to Blame”: The Vulnerable Status of Common Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Development and Change 42, no. 3 (2011): 733–57.
15. Julian Burger, ‘The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: From Advocacy to implementation’, in Reflections on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Stephen Allen and Alexandra Xanthaki (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2011), 41.
16. For a comprehensive overview of the development and adoption of UNDRIP, see Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston, eds., Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action (Saskatoon: Purich Pub., 2010); and Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics, notably Chapter. 2
17. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics, 34.
18. Ibid., 201.
19. Kenneth Deer, ‘Reflections on the Development, Adoption and Implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, in Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action, ed. Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2010), 18–28.
20. James S. Anaya, ‘The Right of Indigenous Peoples to Self-Determination in the Post-Declaration Era’, in Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Claire Charters and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (Copenhagen: Distributors Transaction Publisher & Central Books, 2009), 190.
21. The vote tally is indicative of the global endorsement of UNDRIP as 143 countries voted in favour while 11 abstained and four voted against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United States). In recent years, however, all four objectors have, to varying degrees endorsed the Declaration.
22. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics, 35.
23. G.N. Barrie, ‘The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People: Implications for Land Rights and Self-Determination’, TSAR 2 (2013): 296.
24. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics, 34.
25. Many states, particularly the four dissenting objectors (i.e. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United States) expressed concern that the right to self-determination would be interpreted as the right to statehood, and, eventually, the right to secession. See Karen Engle, ‘On Fragile Architecture: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Context of Human Rights’, European Journal of International Law 22, no. 1 (2011): 145.
26. United Nations, United Nations Declaration, 10.
27. Phil Fontaine, ‘Introduction’, in Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action, ed. Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2010), 8–11; Ricarda Roesch, ‘The Story of a Legal Transplant: The Right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Sub-Saharan Africa’, African Human Rights Law Journal 16, no. 2 (2016): 505–31.
28. Clive Baldwin and Cynthia Morel, ‘Using the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Litigation’, in Reflections on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Stephen Allen and Alexandra Xanthaki (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2011), 121–46; Rachel Murray, ‘The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people in Africa: The Approach of the Regional Organisations to Indigenous Peoples’, in Reflections on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Stephen Allen and Alexandra Xanthaki (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2011), 485–506.
29. Barelli, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’, 2.
30. United Nations, United Nations Declaration, 23.
31. Barelli, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’, 9.
32. Andrea Carmen, ‘The Right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent: A Framework for Harmonious Relations and New Processes for Redress’, in Realizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Triumph, Hope, and Action, ed. Jackie Hartley, Paul Joffe, and Jennifer Preston (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2010), 120.
33. International Labour Organization (ILO), Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169, 27 June 1989.
34. Barelli, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’, 8.
35. Ibid., 6.
36. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Report of the African Commission's Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities: Extractive Industries, Land Rights and Indigenous Populations’/Communities’ Rights: East, Central and Southern Africa (Addis Ababa: ACHPR and IWGIA, 2017), 45.
37. Emily Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa: An Emerging Standard for Extractive Industry Projects, Oxfam America Research Backgrounder series. www.oxfamamerica.org/publications/fpic-in-africa (London: Oxfam, 2014), 20.
38. Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa, 22.
39. Yorck Diergarten, ‘Indigenous or Out of Scope? Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Developing Countries, International Human Rights Law and the Current Deficiencies in Land Rights Protection’, Human Rights Law Review 19, no. 1 (2019): 51.
40. For more examples of the application of FPIC, see Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa.
41. Carmen, ‘The Right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent’; Rhuks Temitope Ako and Olubayo Oluduro, ‘Identifying Beneficiaries of the UN Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership (UNIPP): The Case for the Indigenes of Nigeria's Delta Region’, African Journal of International and Comparative Law 22, no. 3 (2014): 369–98; Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa; Jean-Claude N. Ashukem, ‘Included or Excluded: An Analysis of the Application of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent Principle in Land Grabbing Cases in Cameroon’, PER/PELJ 19 (2016): 1–29; Ken S. Coates and Blaine Favel, Understanding FPIC: From Assertion and Assumption on “Free, Prior and Informed Consent” to a New Model for Indigenous Engagement on Resource Development. Aboriginal Canada and the Natural Resource Economy Series (Ottawa: Macdonald-Laurier Institute, 2016); Lorenza B. Fontana and Jean Grugel, ‘The Politics of Indigenous Participation through “Free Prior Informed Consent”: Reflections from the Bolivian Case’, World Development 77 (2016): 249–61; Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’; ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group; Martin Papillon and Thierry Rodon, Indigenous Consent and Natural Resource Extraction: Foundations for a Made-in-Canada Approach, IRPP Insight 16 (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 2017; Jason Tockman, ‘Eliding Consent in Extractivist States: Bolivia, Canada, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, The International Journal of Human Rights 22, no. 3 (2018): 325–49.
42. Fontana and Grugel, ‘The Politics of Indigenous Participation’, 258.
43. For a detailed analysis of the role of the Africa bloc in the development of UNDRIP, see Crawhall 2011.
44. Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration’, 12.
45. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics.
46. Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration’.
47. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 516.
48. For an overview of the common characteristics and examples of traditionally-recognised Indigenous groups in Africa, see African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Indigenous Peoples in Africa: The Forgotten Peoples? The African Commission's work on indigenous peoples in Africa (Copenhagen: ACHPR and IWGIA, 2006).
49. Helen Quane, ‘The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: New Directions for Self-Determination and Participatory Rights’, in Reflections on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Stephen Allen and Alexandra Xanthaki (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2011), 285.
50. Hodgson, ‘Becoming Indigenous in Africa’, 3. Notwithstanding the resistance of African governments to recognise collective rights, it should be noted that ‘The African Charter expressly recognises and protects collective rights by employing the term “peoples” in its provisions, including in the Preamble, and by its very name, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights’. See ACHPR and IWGIA, Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 20.
51. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Rights, 62.
52. Hodgson, ‘Becoming Indigenous in Africa’; Albert Kwokwo Barume, Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa: With Special Focus on Central, Eastern and Southern Africa (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2010); Baldwin and Morel, ‘Using the United Nations Declaration’.
53. Barume, Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 21.
54. Ibid., 32.
55. Ibid.
56. Baldwin and Morel, ‘Using the United Nations Declaration’, 135.
57. See Ken S. Coates, A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Baldwin and Morel, ‘Using the United Nations Declaration’; Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’. For a brief and thorough overview of the conceptualisation of Indigenous identity, see the introductory chapter in Coates, Global History of Indigenous Peoples. For a book-length comprehensive analysis of the origins and politics of indigenism, see Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
58. ACHPR and IWGIA, Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 11.
59. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 516.
60. Jérémie Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Africa: The Pragmatic Revolution of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights’, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2011): 251.
61. ACHPR and IWGIA, Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 17.
62. Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Africa’, 258.
63. Ako and Oluduro, ‘Identifying Beneficiaries of the UN’, 370.
64. See ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 8.
65. See ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 9. The report notes (on page 36) that as states pursue various infrastructure or resource extraction projects, most Indigenous communities not only realise little or no economic benefit from these projects, but are also most likely to experience ‘a process of often violent appropriation and human rights violations’. This process has been well-documented, for example, in the Niger Delta region which is inhabited by many self-identified Indigenous, and where a legislative overhaul of the country's oil industry was widely considered ‘lopsided in favour of the State’ and a major source of violent conflict. See Ako and Oluduro, ‘Identifying Beneficiaries of the UN’, 370.
66. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 505.
67. ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 28.
68. Carola Lentz, ‘Land and the Politics of Belonging in Africa’, in African Alternatives, ed. Patrick Chabal, Ulf Engel, and Leo de Haan (Boston: Brill, 2007), 54.
69. Sara Berry, ‘Debating the Land Question in Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society & History 44, no. 4 (2002): 638–68; Pauline E. Peters, ‘Inequality and Social Conflict over Land in Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change 4, no. 3 (2004): 269–314; Ato Kwamena Onoma, The Politics of Property Rights Institutions in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Boone, Property and Political Order.
70. Pauline E. Peters, ‘Challenges in Land Tenure and Land Reform in Africa: Anthropological Contributions’, World Development 37, no. 8 (2009): 1317–25.
71. Van Leeuwen and Van der Haar, ‘Land-Violent Conflict Nexus’, 94.
72. Peters, ‘Land Tenure and Land Reform in Africa’, 1318.
73. Collins and Mitchell, ‘World Bank's Land Law Reform Agenda’.
74. Boone, ‘Property and Constitutional Order’, 558.
75. Peters, ‘Land Tenure and Land Reform in Africa’, 1319.
76. Peter Geschiere, ‘Autochthony and the Politics of Belonging’, in Routledge Handbook of African Politics, ed. Nic Cheeseman, David M. Anderson, and Andrea Scheibler (New York: Routledge, 2013), 108.
77. Ibid.
78. Gausset et al., ‘Indigeneity and Autochthony’, 138.
79. ACHPR and IWGIA, Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 14.
80. Gausset et al., ‘Indigeneity and Autochthony’, 135.
81. Geschiere, Perils of Belonging; Isabelle Côté and Matthew I. Mitchell, ‘Deciphering “Sons of the Soil Conflicts”: A Critical Survey of the Literature’, Ethnopolitics 15, no. 4 (2017): 333–51.
82. Ceuppens and Geschiere, ‘Autochthony: Local or Global?, 389.
83. Geschiere, Perils of Belonging.
84. Jackson, ‘Sons of Which Soil?’.
85. Mitchell, ‘Migration, Citizenship and Autochthony’.
86. Anaya, ‘Right of Indigenous Peoples’, 191.
87. For detailed overviews of the application of FPIC throughout Africa, see Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa; and Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’.
88. Greenspan, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in Africa, 10.
89. Ibid.
90. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 510.
91. Ibid., 511.
92. Ibid., 511–13.
93. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 155/96: Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC) and Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) / Nigeria (October 2001).
94. Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Africa’, 266.
95. Ibid., 267.
96. Ricarda Roesch, comment on ‘The Ogiek Case of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Not So Much News After All?’ Blog of the European Journal of International Law, comment posted on June 16, 2017, https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-ogiek-case-of-the-african-court-on-human-and-peoples-rights-not-so-much-news-after-all/ (accessed March 11, 2019).
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 512.
100. Barelli, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’, 16 (emphasis added).
101. See Isabelle Côté and Matthew I. Mitchell, ‘The Far North Act in Ontario, Canada: A Sons of the Soil Conflict in the Making?’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 56, no. 2 (2018): 137–56. For a comprehensive analysis on debates surrounding consent, see Cathal M. Doyle, Indigenous Peoples, Title to Territory, Rights and Resources: The Transformative Role of Free Prior Informed Consent (New York: Routledge, 2015).
102. Roesch, ‘Story of a Legal Transplant’, 527.
103. Ibid., 528.
104. AUC-ECA-AfDB Consortium, Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa: Land Policy in Africa: A Framework to Strengthen Land Rights, Enhance Productivity and Secure Livelihoods (Addis Ababa: AUC-ECA-AfDB Consortium, 2010), xi.
105. ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 49.
106. Ibid., 132.
107. Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics, 34–5.
108. ACHPR and IWGIA, Indigenous Peoples in Africa, 24.
109. Ibid., 24.
110. Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Africa’, 268.
111. Kevin C. Dunn, ‘“Sons of the Soil” and Contemporary State Making: Autochthony, Uncertainty and Political Violence’, Third World Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2009): 113–27; Geschiere, Perils of Belonging.
112. Geschiere, Perils of Belonging.
113. ACHPR and IWGIA, Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 45.
114. Klaus and Mitchell, ‘Land Grievances’.
115. Fontana and Grugel, ‘The Politics of Indigenous Participation’, 256–7.
116. Bronwen Manby, Struggles for Citizenship in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2009).
117. Bøås and Dunn, Politics of Origin in Africa; Keller, Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict.
118. Lorenzo Cotula, The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System (New York: Zed Books, 2013).
119. For some more case specific (i.e. Bolivia and Canada) recommendations for enhancing implementation of FPIC and UNDRIP, see Tockman, ‘Eliding Consent in Extractivist States’.
120. Boone, ‘Property and Constitutional Order’, 558.
121. Klaus and Mitchell, ‘Land Grievances’.
122. ACHPR and IWGIA Report of the African Commission's Working Group, 136.
123. Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration’, 32.
124. Naomi Kipuri, ‘The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the African Context’, in Making the Declaration Work: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Claire Charters and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (Copenhagen: Distributors Transaction Publisher & Central Books, 2009), 252–63. Despite the real capacity challenges facing civil society actors in Africa, one study nonetheless suggests that one of the profound achievements ‘of the two UN International Decades of the World's Indigenous Peoples has been the mobilisation of a new wing of African civil society’. See Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration’, 31.
125. Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights in Africa’, 269.
126. For an interesting analysis on “de-indigenising” the land rights framework, see Diergarten, ‘Indigenous or Out of Scope?’, which examines the potential of the recently adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.