Delegates, ladies and gentlemen. My
name is Saara-Maria Salonen and I represent the Finnish Sámi parliament and I
am a part of sami parliaments youth council.
On behalf of the Finnish Saami Parliament we would
like to thank the WGIP for the invitation to take part in the Barents regions
indigenous peoples congress for the second time now. We would like to thank our
speakers for yesterday, the topics were very interesting. We would also like to
thank Dr. James Anaya for attending this conference and we appreciate the
significant work he has done for indigenous peoples. We think that although the
congress is still young it will gain more and more importance as a key tool for
indigenous peoples in the areas where we see and feel more and more pressure.
For example in Finnish side of Sapmi from the mining companies, mass-tourism
and other forms of natural
resource extractions.
I would like to use a little bit time on telling about
some major movements from the Finnish side of Sapmi. Finnish Saami Parliament had
the first time in history the possibility to take part in Finnish governments
cabinet negotiations forming new majority government. The ILO 169 ratification
means are now said clearly that in the next coming 4 years ILO 169 will be
ratified. The UN convention on biodiversity and its paragraph 8j has been a key
factor on getting a process started to secure traditional knowledge of
indigenous peoples, in this case in Finland
We feel that the work of WGIP is very important and we
see that especially on “Barents issues” we have a lot of work to do and follow,
as the area has gained special attention from the whole world as a place of
rich natural resources. For the Finnish Saami parliament these last couple of
months have been a very important. In the Finnish side we have had Saami
parliament elections and five days from now, on 15.february, they are going to
organize themselves and this has a straight connection to the WGIPs work as the
Finnish Saami parliaments member in the WGIP will be selected for the next 4
years. We would like to recognize the work of our member Tuomas Aslak Juuso
from the work he has done for the last 4 years regarding to WGIPs work.
Unfortunatelly he couldn’t be here today but sends a lot of greetings to the
congress.
As a key remark to the declaration draft we would
first like to highlight and talk about the importance of using declaration as a
tool to promote our issues. We feel that promoting and using the declaration
should be done more effectively, and if we don’t do so, we find ourselves
working inefficiently. Especially in the Barents system we need to raise
awareness of the declaration and promote it too, to make it more known by the
decision makers.
The Finnish Sámi parliament has been pleased with the
Action Plan but we have a few marks on the resolution:
About the third paragraph:
Affirming also Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination,
have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their
internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their
autonomous functions,
To the third paragraph we would like to point out here
that Indigenous peoples should also have the right to determine themselves the
definition of who can be called for example sámi.
About the 13th paragraph:
Welcomes the report and recommendation by
the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya on the
situation of the Sami people in the Sápmi region of Norway ,
Sweden and Finland
Here we would like to see more proposal form towards
the states that they should resolve the remarks that special rapporteur has
noticed. We think that the congress should take more proposing role towards the
states especially in this case.
We would like to thank the organizers for making this
congress possible. We wish the best of luck for us all and hope we’ll see each
other in the future many times more. Thank you for your interest and for
listening.
