Funding for research examing how to remove obstacles from concluding the Draft Nordic Saami Convention

7.5.2009 14:00
This three year project studies the recognition of indigenous property systems within Arctic states.

The Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland) received funding for its project titled "The Recognition of Indigenous Property Systems within Arctic States - an Issue that needs to be examined before the Draft Nordic Sami Convention can move ahead".

The research seeks to build upon one of the concluding recommendations of the legal chapter of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR).  That recommendation deals with the challenge of recognizing indigenous property systems within the Arctic nation states.

- This issue is of particular salience within the Nordic states of Finland, Norway and Sweden because of continuing debates in two of those states as to the ratification of International Labour Organisations (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, and an ongoing discussion in all the three states relating to the Draft Nordic Saami Convention (which was drafted under the auspices of the Nordic Council), says the project’s research leader, professor Timo Koivurova from NIEM.

The main questions and goals of the project are:

1. What are the reasons why it has not been possible to commence negotiations on the Draft Nordic Saami Convention?
2. How have the legal systems of the Nordic states and other states dealt with the difficult questions of recognizing the property and resource rights of indigenous peoples?   
3. What kind of general lessons we can draw from the various approaches of these different legal systems and how do developments in international law (e.g. the norms of ILO Convention 169, the jurisprudence of the Inter American Human Rights System and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) challenge these different approaches?

It is evident that the questions posed here challenge and will continue to challenge Arctic states in the coming years and decades, even if the respective treaties were ratified. As stated by researcher Tanja Joona, the project manager of the research programme, "As shown by the example of Norway, a country that ratified the ILO Convention No. 169 already almost 20 years ago, it is very difficult to re-organise the ownership and resource rights systems even if the Convention so requires".

The research project is composed of researchers from 7 countries, who are experts not only of their own country’s ownership and resource rights systems but are knowledgeable of indigenous property and resource rights systems in general. The project will be funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers from its Arctic Co-operation Programme 2009-2011. 

More information from Researcher Tanja Joona. You can also read more on the Arctic Indigenous Peoples and Arctic Human Development Report from here.