Intervention by Jorge Agurto, Perú, of Servindi Intercultural Communications Services at United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 6th Session, May 2007, Topic 9: Future work of the Forum, including new issues.

All human beings have the right to the freedom of expression, as one of their essential human rights. Likewise, Indigenous peoples enjoy the collective right to communication. This right is essential to their identity and development, and it must be exercised as part of their right to self-determination.

Indigenous persons who communicate through all forms of media are social agents of their communities. They have a noble social calling and they serve a very important function, as they disseminate Indigenous languages through oral, written, artistic, visual and electronic media. Thus, they also contribute to cultural diversity and inclusion.

This said, the majority of Indigenous peoples lack their own media channels and have difficulty accessing other public and private ones. Indigenous communicators are subject to threats, prosecution and abuse by corrupt authorities and powerful groups that violate communities’ rights.

As if this weren’t enough, Indigenous communicators are discriminated against for lacking diplomas in journalism or memberships in professional associations. Despite the fact that community radio is recognized in many countries, in Peru, for example, there is not one single community radio station that holds legal status.

This is mainly due to the government’s lack of political will, shown by the fact that it has not updated the National Radiowaves Plan in rural areas; furthermore, it makes running these stations very difficult due to the large amount of centralized, bureaucratic paperwork that must completed in order for them to become legal.

Thus, thousands of community radio stations are considered “pirate,” or illegal, stations, despite their expressed desire for legality. Proof of the abuse that community radio stations suffer is the law that sanctions use of the radio wave spectrum without a license, defining it as “aggravated theft,” and punishes broadcasters, who are looked down upon as “pirates,” punishable with up to twelve years in prison.

These affronts to Indigenous Peoples’ right to communication are occurring throughout the world. This situation threatens to become worse with the increasing use of digital radio, whose licenses are often granted with bias in favor special interest groups who monopolize the radio waves, or religious groups who are given unrestricted access.

Given all of the above, as an expression of the sentiments of Peru’s Indigenous media communicators, who have joined forces under REDCIP, the Peruvian Indigenous Communicators’ Network – and in accordance with some of the proposals formulated by the President of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) - Servindi Intercultural Communications Services requests that the Permanent Forum:

1. Ensure that Indigenous persons who communicate through the media are recognized as social agents of their communities who carry out an important social and cultural function, thus contributing to cultural diversity and inclusion.

2. Disseminate the regulatory principles and frameworks that guarantee the right to freedom of expression and communication, in particular those which establish that, “compulsory membership or the requirement of a university degree for the practice of journalism constitutes unlawful restrictions of freedom of expression.” (Declaration of the Principles on Freedom of Expression, approved by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS).)

3. Request that States guarantee unlimited respect for Indigenous communicators’ informative activities, and that they are able to fully exercise their rights to freedom of expression and communication.

4. Encourage States to promote the media’s adoption of intercultural codes of ethics, so as to avoid ethnic and cultural stereotypes that discriminate against and degrade Indigenous citizens.

5. Promote communication as a crosscutting topic fundamental to Indigenous Peoples’ development and push for it to be dealt with in an international seminar specifically dedicated to this topic.

6. Incorporate a session on the topic of the Indigenous peoples’ right to communication into the Permanent Forum. The objective of this session would be to evaluate this situation and related threats, as well as to assess States’ compliance with agreements adopted by the World Summit on Information Societies (WSIS), held in two phases (Geneva 2003 and Tunisia 2005), whose goal was to contribute to narrowing the digital divide.

New York, May 23rd, 2007