Newly Recognized Indigenous Rights a Dead Letter?
Newly Recognized Indigenous Rights a Dead Letter?
Monday, 16 March 2015 00:00
By Claudia Ávalos and Edgardo Ayala, Inter Press Service | News Analysis
Izalco, El Salvador - Nearly three years after the rights of El Salvador's indigenous people were recognized in the constitution, there are still no public policies and laws to translate that historic achievement into reality.
In June 2014 the single-chamber legislature ratified a constitutional reform passed in April 2012 which acknowledged new rights of native peoples in this Central American nation. But the leaders of indigenous communities and organisations told IPS they were worried it would all remain on paper.
"There have been changes full of good intentions, but the good intentions need a little orientation," Betty Pérez, the head of the Salvadoran National Indigenous Coordinating Council (CCNIS), told Tierramérica.
The reform of article 63 of the constitution states that "El Salvador recognises indigenous peoples and will adopt policies aimed at maintaining and developing their ethnic and cultural identity, worldview, values and spirituality."
These cover a wide range of areas, such as respect for indigenous peoples' medicinal practices and their collective rights to land. And according to lawmakers of different stripes, the constitutional amendment pays a historic debt to the country's native people and helps pull them out of the invisibility to which they had been condemned.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29653-newly-recognised-indigenous-rights-a-dead-letter
