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OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse taalkunde, letterkunde en geschiedenis. Jaargang 30 (2011)

OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse taalkunde, letterkunde en geschiedenis. Jaargang 30

(2011)– [tijdschrift] OSO–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Richard Price
Saramaka People v Suriname
The rights of Suriname's Maroons and Indigenous peoples in the twenty-first century

Within decades of the first Europeans having set foot in Suriname, Maroon and Indigenous peoples began fighting to carve out and protect their lands, the material and spiritual foundation of their societies and cultures.1 In this article, I focus on the recent experience of the Saamaka2 who, since the 1990s, have led a successful struggle to protect their territory, culminating in the landmark 2007 judgment of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights in their favor.

The Court's ruling in Saramaka People v Suriname ends with a series of ten actions that the government of Suriname must take, the most important of which are that:

The State shall delimit, demarcate, and grant collective title over the territory of the members of the Saramaka people, in accordance with their customary laws, and through previous, effective and fully informed consultations with the Saramaka people [...] This must start by 19 March 2008 and conclude no later than 19 December 2010.
The State shall grant the members of the Saramaka people legal recognition of the collective juridical capacity, pertaining to the community to which they belong, with the purpose of ensuring the full exercise and enjoyment of their right to communal property, as well as collective access to justice, in accordance with their communal system, customary laws, and traditions.
The State shall remove or amend the legal provisions that impede protection of the right to property of the members of the Saramaka people and adopt, in its domestic legislation, and through prior, effective and fully informed consultations with the Saramaka people, legislative, administrative, and other measures as may be required to
recognize, protect, guarantee and give legal effect to the right of the members of the Saramaka people to hold collective title of the territory they have traditionally used and occupied as well as their right to manage, distribute, and effectively control such territory, in accordance with their customary laws and traditional collective land tenure system. (This must be done within the three-year period established to comply with the order pertaining to delimitation, demarcation and titling, because the State will be unable to issue title without first adopting the legislative means for doing so.)
The State shall adopt legislative, administrative and other measures necessary to recognize and ensure the right of the Saramaka people to be effectively consulted, in accordance with their traditions and customs, or when necessary, the right to give or withhold their free, informed and prior consent, with regards to development or investment projects that may affect their territory, and to reasonably share the benefits of such projects with the members of the Saramaka people, should these be ultimately carried out.
The State shall allocate the amounts set in this Judgment as compensation for material and non-material damages in a community development fund created and established for the benefit of the members of the Saramaka people [a total of US$ 675,000]. The State must allocate at least US$ 225,000 to the development fund no later than 19 December 2008, and the total amount no later than 19 December 2010.3

As I write this at the end of 2010, Suriname has done little to abide by the Court's judgment, other than to assert its good intentions. It has complied with the easiest of the rulings, paying the costs of the petitioners in preparing their case ($ 15,000 to the Forest Peoples Programme, $ 75,000 to the Vereniging van Saramakaanse Gezagsdragers [VSG]). But, on the more serious measures - delimiting Saamaka territory and granting the Saamaka people collective title to it, changing domestic legislation to recognize the Saamaka people as a juridical personality, and placing $ 675,000 in a community development fund for the benefit of the Saamaka people - all of which, according to the Court's judgment, must be completed by December 2010, the State has barely made a start.4

In its various pronouncements and communications, the State has taken the position that it can resolve the Saamaka situation only as part of a broader reconsideration of the place of all Indigenous peoples and Maroons within Suriname, effectively postponing specific action in response to the Court's judgment. The State points out, for example, that ‘Suriname has many tribal groups that reside and live next to each other. This circumstance results in added complexity to handle the Saamaka case as an issue that stands on its own. The government is for this reason pursuing an integral approach.’5 Toward this end, the State has proposed a project, ‘Support for the Sustainable Development of the Interior’ (SSDI), sponsored a public meeting in a theater in Paramaribo devoted to ‘The Judgment of the Saramaka Los: Next Steps?’ (December 2008) and a conference (‘National Land Rights Conference’, in June 2009), and established an inter-ministerial executive committee to coordinate implementation of the judgment. As far as I can determine, there has been no further concrete action to implement the Court's orders.

Vigilant and proactive

Since the judgment of 2007, the Saamaka have remained vigilant and proactive. In September 2009, their representatives submitted comments to the Court, responding to Suriname's claims about the progress it had made on implementation of the judgment.6 They assert that Suriname has taken no steps at all to ‘delimit, demarcate, and grant collective title’ to Saamaka territory, nor has it consulted with the Saamaka on these issues - despite the Saamaka having requested meetings in several formal yet friendly letters that reminded the government of their obligations under the judgment.7 They refer to Operative Paragraph 5 of the judgment, which orders the State to ‘evaluate whether a modification of the rights of existing concessionaires operating within Saramaka territory is necessary in order to preserve the survival of the Saramaka people’, and say that they ‘have no reason to believe that the State has considered complying with this component of the order’, despite the fact that ‘there are large-scale mining concessions and one operating gold mine within traditional Saramaka territory [the contentious Rosebel mine near the

village of Nieuw Koffiekamp] as well as a number of logging concessions that require review and potential modification’. The Saamaka add that the required review and potential modification of these concessions includes potential benefit-sharing measures required by the Court.

In their ‘Comments’, the Saamaka next discuss the proposed asphalting of the road around the lake, which would make Saamaka villages readily accessible from the coast, and which was supposed to begin before the end of 2009. The State has contracted this project to a Chinese company called Dalian Xinke, with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) for impact assessments. In contravention of the Court's judgment, there has been no formal consultation with the Saamaka.

The Saamaka next roundly criticize the State's SSDI project, which has ‘as one of its objectives the drafting of legislation on the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples’. It is being implemented by a NGO called the Amazon Conservation Team Suriname, which the Saamaka claim has little if any experience in drafting legislation ‘and whose chair is one of the delegates [legal advisors] who represented (and continues to represent) the State before the Court in Saramaka People, thus raising concerns about its impartiality and independence’. For these and other reasons (notably the failure to consult with Indigenous and tribal peoples about project design and implementation), the Saamaka point out, the SSDI has been rejected by the national Association of Indigenous Village Leaders (Vereniging van Inheemse Dorpshoofden in Suriname, VIDS) as well as by the Saamaka people.8

Against the claims of President Ronald Venetiaan, Minister Michel Felisi, and Suriname legal advisor Hans Lim a Po, who made speeches at the June 2009 land rights conference, the Saamaka insist simply that the judgment be respected - and implemented according to the schedule mandated by the Court.

In his comments at the conference, President Venetiaan stressed that ‘in the development of tribal groups, choices have to be made. Are we on the road to modernization of the total community? Or are we on the road of retreating within the respective tribal groups?’ And, alluding to the problems of Suriname's largest gold mine (which the Saamaka say is in their territory) and implicitly criticizing the Saamaka for having taken their case to the Court, he concluded that,

I think we should explicitly emphasize the area of economic rights, the area of economic interests [...] That is where the big challenge lies for the people of Suriname. It is not about whether one has the right to dance as one dances, to eat as one eats, to sing as one sings, but rather about which economic rights [he mentions as possibilities, ‘everything that is found under your house, under your village, in the territory you inhabit, above, on, and under the soil’] are linked to the recognition of the rights of tribal groups in this country.

Minister Felisi was equally blunt:

The movement around the recognition of indigenous and tribal rights focuses mainly on the themes of self-government, territories they inhabit, and political participation. It certainly does not concern the demarcation and relinquishing (allocating) [of] a piece of land to one part of the community over which the government then no longer has any say [...]
In our country the discussions regarding this issue have been hesitant and circumspect. You could almost say that there is a taboo in the relationship between the government [...] and tribal groups. This is how outsiders have been given room to penetrate these tribal communities in our country and succeeded in introducing their own interpretations into these groups - interpretations that often do not correspond to the scope of the treaties and conventions.

Lim a Po summarized Suriname's position regarding the order to change its legislation as follows: ‘The problem is that the Court can say this easily, but implementation is not easy. It is a complex issue of much significance, with possibly important political, social, and cultural implications. It is easier said than done.’9

Suriname has made one positive move toward solving the problem identified by Lim a Po. The State has made a request, which was accepted, that Professor James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous people, help draft the legislation that will be needed to implement the Court's judgment. In March 2009, this move was welcomed and endorsed by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).10 But Suriname has never followed up.

There is reason to expect further delays in Suriname's making concrete progress on the implementation of the Court's judgment, as the new

government organizes itself and adopts its own policies for the interior. Meanwhile, the Court, prodded by the representatives of the Saamaka, will continue its monitoring process.11 As best I can tell, the main sanctions available to the Court and petitioners in case of Suriname's non-compliance with the judgment (or even substantial malingering in implementing it) would be to follow the money trail. Since Suriname receives substantial development funds from the Inter-American Development Bank (which, like the Court, is an organ of the Organization of American States, OAS), the threat of withholding such funds might well tip the balance toward the State's compliance.12

In November 2009, when two government ministers flew into Laduáni to inaugurate a new primary school in nearby Goeyaba, they were met by Saamaka protesters who were angry about government delays in implementing the Court's ruling. As reported by De Ware Tijd, the protesters held aloft handwritten placards saying (in Dutch), ‘Implementation of the Saamaka judgment now’, ‘Land rights are human rights’ and ‘Legal recognition of the traditional authority of captains and assistant headmen’.

Since December 2007, when the Court's judgment was made public, the Suriname government has done almost nothing to recognize the rights of the Saamaka people as ordered by the Court. This week's rally in Laduani was directed at Michel Felisi, Minister for Regional Development, whom the Saramaccan captains urged to hasten the implementation process, in order to comply with the Court's deadline of December 2010 [...] As he climbed down from the plane, the protesters raised placards and shouted. Military men and other security personnel closely guarded the rally, which remained peaceful [...] Minister Felisi has expressed disappointment over the protest action. He referred to his own Maroon [Ndyuka] heritage and said he had not expected such a protest from ‘his own people’.13

Current hotspots

I offer here my personal summary of current hotspots relating to the rights of the Saamaka and other tribal and Indigenous peoples - ongoing issues to monitor, in addition to the implementation of the Court's judgment in Saramaka People v Suriname (and Moiwana Village v Suriname).

For the Saamaka:

- The asphalting of the Afobaka road (the Tjóngalángapási). The government has neither conducted the legally required environmental impact reports nor has it conducted the legally mandated consultations with the Saamaka, in whose territory the road lies and whose lives would be significantly affected by the project. On 23 November 2009, President Venetiaan, the vice-president, and various government ministers, in the presence of the ambassador of China (with whom the government has contracted to asphalt the road), publicly celebrated the start of the project, stating that it would lead to ‘the building, renovation, and expansion of various polyclinics, schools, and council houses by the state’ and to ‘the coming of city people who will live, work, and invest’ in the region. ‘The growing number of tourists will bring in foreign currency’. President Venetiaan stressed the benefits that would come once there is a full ‘North-South highway to Brazil’ - a long-term dream of many a Suriname administration. (If the asphalting of the road is meant to be a step in that direction, the consequences for Saamaka would be that much more enormous...) This ceremony was held, as far as the newspaper reported, without the presence of Saamaka.14
- The situation of Nieuw Koffiekamp, the primarily-Ndyuka transmigration village of refugees from under the lake that is part of the most lucrative gold-mining concession in Suriname, currently owned by Iamgold, a Canadian multinational (the tenth largest gold-mining corporation in the world). Iamgold's Gros Rosebel mine, as well as its newer potential mining sites nearby, lie in traditional Saamaka territory.15 The situation is complicated by the fact that many of the inhabitants of Nieuw Koffiekamp engage in small-scale gold mining on the fringes of Iamgold's commercial mine. I was told by a participant at the Gaán Kuútu (tribal council meeting) of May 2008, that when Gaamá Belfón repeated that the mines were in Saamaka territory - reiterating the traditional Saamaka phrase (enshrined, in their understandings, in the Treaty of 1762), ‘From Mawási on up, the land is ours’ - President Venetiaan visibly blanched. The issue of demarcating and titling Saamaka territory, ordered by the Court, will be at its most contentious concerning this area.
- The Tapanahoni Diversion Project, which would force the displacement of a number of Ndyuka villages on the Tapanahoni, as well as raising the level of the Afobaka reservoir so that a number of additional Saamaka villages just to its south would be flooded - all this to increase the generating power of the Afobaka hydroelectric dam so that Alcoa could reopen and expand its aluminum smelting capabilities. This project is currently pending before the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), funded in part by the Inter-American Development Bank, and is slated to cost US$ 880 million. In Rainforest Warriors (2011: 228-229) I wrote that ‘Because of the complexity of this project, which would require roads to be built into the interior and canals to extend over great distances, it currently seems unlikely that it will be made a reality. The significant and obvious costs, in terms of ecological damage and human rights abuses, seem to me to be so great as to discourage the realization of this project.’ But who knows? A recent article in De Ware Tijd suggests that despite the project's challenges, the Bouterse government plans to forge ahead.16
- Bioprospecting by the Suriname Biodiversity Prospecting Initiative (SBPI), which involves obtaining knowledge about traditional medicine, in particular medicinal plants, from Indigenous and Maroon traditional healers and shamans. (The SBPI is a joint effort of Conservation International, the BGVS - a state-owned pharmaceutical company - the National Herbarium of Suriname, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.) Suriname has no laws that protect Indigenous and tribal peoples' traditional knowledge. Indeed, the State maintains that it owns all biological and genetic resources and any exploitation of traditional knowledge pertaining to those resources is the property of the State - a claim exactly like that to the Saamaka peoples' land, prior to the ruling of the Court. Clearly, until the Saamaka gain title to their territory, in line with the order of the Court, it will be much harder for them to negotiate such matters. But once they do gain title, they should be in a better position to begin to protect their rights in these respects, both deciding what they wish to share with outsiders and what benefits they should derive therefrom.17
- A ‘Protected Area’ in Saamaka territory. In contrast to earlier projects proposed by outsiders, such as Conservation International's initiative to expand the Central Suriname Nature Reserve into Saamaka territory (Price 2011: 137-140), a proposal has been floated by Gaamá Belfón to turn a part of the southernmost portion of Saamaka territory into a protected area managed by the Saamaka people. (Until now, the designation of a nature reserve or other protected area automatically gave title of that area to the State. Given the Court's rulings, the establishment of such an area by the Saamaka would not have that effect.) The area under consideration includes a number of eighteenth-century village sites and is of great cultural and religious importance. It also contains an important watershed and the headwaters of the Suriname River, one of the country's main waterways, and a substantial area of primary tropical forest. As part of this proposal, the Saamaka may seek to develop plans for watershed management, eco-tourism, and other community development initiatives. This plan must await the demarcation and titling mandated by the Court.

For other Maroons and Indigenous peoples:

- The Nassau Mountains mining project. Suriname has granted exploratory mining concessions to Suralco (Alcoa) for bauxite extraction on lands that traditionally belong to the Paramaka Maroons. As these explorations were progressing, gold was discovered and Alcoa is now partnering in the area with the world's largest gold producer, Newmont Mining. In addition, in 2009, the government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Swiss multinational Glencore International AG for underwriting additional bauxite mining activities in the Nassau and Bakhuys areas. No adequate consultations have occurred with the Paramakas and it is unclear whether sufficient environmental or social impact studies have been conducted or completed. In addition, Alcoa has recently announced plans to build a 125-kilometer road connecting the Nassau Mountain mines to Paranam, to be serviced by bauxite-carrying ‘road trains’, which would require the displacement of five villages belonging to Indigenous peoples.18
- The Sarakreek mining project. Owned by Iamgold, and located ‘100 kilometers south of the Rosebel mine’, drilling began in 2009. ‘The project area covers 743 square kilometers of Golden Star's concession rights in the Brokolonko Range of eastern Suriname. Initial exploratory research indicated possible reserves of up to 3 million
troy ounces.’19 Another company, called Sara Creek Gold (listed on the OTC, the over the counter market), announced in October 2009 that it is planning extensive exploration and investment in the area.20
- The Bakhuys Mountains bauxite project, also known as the Kabalebo Project, is scheduled to begin operations in 2012 (or soon thereafter).21 Alcoa, which has few bauxite reserves remaining in its current mines and whose smelter at Paranam has been closed since the turbines at Afobaka silted up ten years ago, is about to expand into West Suriname, affecting at least ten villages belonging to the Lokono and Trio peoples. The 2,800-square-kilometer concession and exploration permits were issued without any consultation with the affected communities. The proposed hydroelectric dams on the Kabalebo River would power a new smelter, as part of creating an integrated aluminum industry in Suriname, and would create three reservoirs that would be significantly larger than the one at Afobaka. Dr. Robert Goodland, who helped to create the World Commission on Dams, and was the chief technical advisor to the World Bank's Extractive Industry Review, observes that, ‘The Bakhuys bauxite mine project is a classic case of asymmetric power. Unsustainable mining confronts sustainable traditional societies. Rich and powerful multinationals will impose potentially severe impacts on inexperienced, weak, largely illiterate and poor Indigenous Peoples.’22
- The Patamacca palm oil project in the Marowijne District. Suriname has granted permission to a Chinese company, China Sang Heng Tai, to create and operate a 40,000 hectare palm oil plantation at Patamacca, in an area traditionally occupied and used by Indigenous Kalina and Lokono villages as well as Ndyuka Maroon communities. There was no prior consultation with the affected communities. The plan is to clear-cut the existing forest and then plant oil-bearing palms, destroying the ecology of the area and its capacity to provide subsistence resources. It will ‘cause irreparable harm to indigenous peoples and Maroons who count the area as part of their ancestral homeland’.23
- Gold mining in the Benzdorp region. This area in southeast Suriname was traditionally part of the Aluku and Wayana homelands. Since the 1990s, Brazilian gold miners have flooded into the region, creating multiple problems (see, for example, De Theije & Heemskerk 2009), and the sorting-out of land and resource titles has yet to be effected. Kenneth Bilby, veteran ethnographer of the Aluku, wrote me after a visit in late 2009: ‘I briefly passed Benzdorp on this trip, and the amount of activity (constant air traffic) and the explosion of ramshackle “development” there is truly incredible - but it's all over the Suriname side of the Lawa and farther upriver.’ Gaanman Adochini ‘complained fervently’ to Bilby about the wholesale granting of logging and mining concessions in this region by the Paramaribo government, with complete lack of regard for pre-existing Aluku claims. He also complained about the large frontier settlement that has mushroomed directly across the river from Maripasoula, on the Suriname side (replete with restaurants, nightclubs, and brothels), populated mostly by Brazilians, Ndyukas, and people from Paramaribo - outsiders living as they wish on Aluku territory, with no respect for Aluku law. Bilby asks, rhetorically, ‘But what can the Aluku do against this influx, which continues to grow and threatens to outnumber the Aluku and Wayana populations combined?’ Meanwhile, the Alukus (the majority of whom are based on the French side of the border river and are therefore French citizens) feel that the bulk of their territory, which lies on the French side, is under assault from decisions taken in Paris and Cayenne. Having no legal existence as a people - since French law does not recognize minorities of any sort - they are being subjected to having their traditional territory parceled out in individual lots on cadastral maps against their will, to frequent raids by gendarmes to prevent them from gold mining within their territory (an artisanal activity they have conducted for generations), and to a plan to include much of their traditional territory in a national park (which would prevent them from gold mining as well as other traditional activities in their territory). Gaanman Adochini recently asked Bilby whether he had any ideas about outside support to protect Aluku rights against these incursions. Might the European Court of Human Rights (in Strasbourg) be an appropriate venue for Alukus (and the neighboring Wayanas) to seek legal protection from what they perceive as imminent threats to their territorial sovereignty?
- The case submitted by the Kalina and Lokono peoples of the Lower Marowijne River concerning their property rights. They are complaining about the establishment of three protected areas in their territory, bauxite-mining operations conducted by Suralco and BHP/
Billiton in their territory, and wealthy individuals from Paramaribo building vacation homes on the beachfront in four of their villages, which were forcibly allotted by the State in 1975-1976 over the communities' vociferous objections. This case was declared admissible by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in October 2007 and could be sent to the Court as early as the end of 2010.24
- Micro-hydroelectric projects. In 2009, Suriname announced a surprising number of planned micro-hydropower projects, a number of which are in Saamaka territory. The Saamaka - two years after the Court's decision! - have not been consulted. One project is said to be already underway in Ndyuka territory near the village of the gaama, the other near the Indigenous village of Palumeu. But there are plans for such projects on some of the greatest rapids in Saamaka territory, Gaándan (on the Gaánlío), Tápawáta (at the confluence of the Gaánlío and Pikílío), ‘Felusi Afobasu’ (do they mean Félulási?), and ‘Felusi Mindrihati’ (do they mean Bíaháti?), plus three others outside of Saamaka territory.25
- Gold mining at ‘Saramacca’. In a press release of 9 November 2009, multinational Golden Star reports that it is ‘continuing exploration activities at Saramacca, our joint venture with Newmont in Suriname’. In a press release of 24 February 2010, Golden Star mentioned an agreement with Newmont to buy its share in this project for ‘approximately $8.0 million’. This project appears to be in Matawai territory. I know nothing more about these developments.
- The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which purports to assist developing countries in their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), by providing value to standing forests. Suriname is becoming heavily involved in these efforts, both to raise cash and to reassert its ownership over forests. This might well lead to restrictions on traditional farming (such as that practiced by the Saamaka) which Suriname - like many other nations - claims is bad for a low-carbon economy.

Right to self-determination

In his comments on the significance of the 2007 ‘Saramaka’ judgment, Fergus MacKay has stressed its ruling on the right to self-determination. Noting that ‘the analysis underlying the Court's orders breaks new

ground in many respects’, he singles out its ruling that the Saamaka people hold the right to self-determination:

and that this right cannot be restricted when interpreting the property rights guaranteed under Article 21 of the American Convention [...] The application of the right to self-determination thus supports an interpretation of Article 21 that recognizes indigenous and tribal peoples' right ‘to freely determine and enjoy their own social, cultural and economic development, which includes the right to enjoy their particular spiritual relationship with the territory they have traditionally used and occupied’. Consistent with this, the Court ordered that recognition of the Saamaka people's territorial rights must include recognition of ‘their right to manage, distribute, and effectively control such territory’, in accordance with their customary laws and traditional collective land tenure system (MacKay 2010: 27-28).

These newly recognized legal rights have broad potential impact. For example, in the domain of international agreements regarding climate change, Indigenous and tribal peoples - whose lands include a substantial proportion of the world's remaining forests - could become significant players. One could imagine, for example, that the Saamaka (or any other such people whose territory includes large stretches of rainforest) could be involved directly in the sorts of carbon reduction and exchange programs that are beginning to be negotiated around the globe. The government of Guyana, for example, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Norway that provides up to US$250 million during the next few years for it to implement a low-carbon development strategy and save its remaining tropical forest.26 (Unfortunately, Guyana has not adequately consulted with the numerous Indigenous peoples whose traditional territories are covered by this agreement, rendering its future uncertain.) Meanwhile, Suriname has stated that, rather than seeking this sort of bilateral (nation-to-nation) agreement, it will seek multilateral compensation, under the United Nations REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), for ‘the way it has preserved its forests for so many years’.27 Once the Court's orders are carried out, couldn't the Saamaka - in partnership with a single nation, such as Norway, or some international organization - decide to preserve, for example, the southernmost part of their territory and be compensated for doing so?

The REDD program, within which the Norway-Guyana agreement is conceptualized, is designed to assign a financial value for the carbon stored in forests and to encourage developing countries to reduce deforestation and invest in sustainable and low carbon development. Part of the idea is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions caused by deforestation, which are estimated to be around 20 percent of annual global CO2 emissions. REDD's home page claims that ‘it is predicted that financial flows for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD could reach up to US$30 billion a year. This significant North-South flow of funds could reward a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions and could also support new, pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity, and secure vital ecosystem services.’

But in reality, it seems likely that much of the potential reduction will disappear as part of carbon-trading schemes that allow wealthy, mostly northern, corporations to continue to pollute.28 Not to mention that these plans for carbon trading would generate billions of dollars for hedge funds as carbon-trading markets are set up on the model of commodities and stock markets, something that has not escaped the attention of northern governments and their corporate friends. There is no small irony in the fact that Suriname, which during the 1990s so aggressively sought to sell off its forest resources to rapacious multinational logging corporations (paying no attention to the rights of its tribal peoples), now seeks to promote itself as the most conservationist country on the planet, ready to preserve its 90 percent forest cover (again paying no attention to the rights of its tribal peoples). Money talks.29

The potential role of Indigenous and tribal peoples in these developments seems enormous - but only if states can be held to the sorts of human rights principles that the Court underlined in Saramaka People v Suriname and that are more broadly expressed in the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The problem is that such rights are only now beginning to be seriously considered as part of such agreements.30 Internationally, to date, Indigenous and tribal peoples

have generally been excluded from discussions and agreements about mitigating climate change, sometimes with disastrous consequences for their well-being.31 The discussions, to date, have remained at the level of nation states, largely excluding the very populations that inhabit, and rightfully own, many of the world's most precious forest resources.32

 

For the present, the Saamaka and their Maroon and Indigenous neighbors will need to be vigilant and proactive in seeing that Suriname implements the judgment of 2007 (and the interpretive judgment of 2008). The coming several years will be pivotal, on the ground in Suriname, in determining whether the rulings of the Court in San José have the desired local -and international - effects. The Saamaka leaders, negotiating with the government of Suriname, will need to draw on all their considerable political and warrior skills to assure that their abstract legal victory brings the desired concrete benefits to their long-suffering but immensely proud and vibrant people.

One might go so far as to say that the Saamaka confront two contrastive visions of their future. The first, promulgated by a series of governments in Paramaribo, sees ‘development’ and ‘integration’ leading to their rapid assimilation into some sort of mythically harmonious, multicultural national population.33 The second, made possible by the Court ruling and the militancy of the VSG, sees a self-determining Saamaka people controlling and making the ultimate decisions about what takes place in their territory.

Recently, Vinije Haabo, an educated Saamaka living in the Netherlands, gave this pessimistic prophesy to an interviewer:

In twenty years' time there will hardly be any original inhabitants left in the Surinamese interior. Multiple mixed social groups will live there [...] Chinese, Brazilians, and other foreigners who are only there to extract the raw materials and leave as soon as possible [...] I expect there'll be an exodus [of Saamaka and other traditional forest dwellers] and we'll see ghettos in the big cities just like in Africa and [elsewhere in] South America (Haabo 2010: 76).

His prediction fits the Venetiaan government's most recent proposals for the interior. These include a road that continues from the village of Pókigoón (currently the southern end of the road that connects Saamaka territory to Paramaribo) upstream along the Suriname River nearly to the confluence with the Gaánlío, then cuts eastward to the Tapanahoni and upstream along that river through Ndyuka territory, continuing southward until it connects with the Brazilian national highway system.34 Such a road would make the villages (and forest) in Saamaka and Ndyuka territory easily accessible to tourists, land speculators, miners, loggers, and other outsiders. It is almost as if that government's intention was to steamroller the rights of Maroons and Indigenous people before the Court or anyone else really took notice and to empty the forest of its current inhabitants in order to permit economic development that benefits the State. Almost all plans of that government for the interior ignore the Court's judgment and proceed as if the judgment has never been issued.

The position taken by the representatives of the Bouterse administration at the hearing before the Court on 2 September 2010, called to discuss reasons for the lack of progress in the implementation of the 2007 judgment, shows absolutely no change from that of the previous administration. The Suriname government continues to prevaricate and often to lie, postponing for as long as possible the recognition of Saamaka territory and of the Saamaka people as a legal entity. Indeed, at that hearing, the Saamaka revealed to the Court that in May 2010, in violation of the 2007 judgment, Suriname had granted (among other such concessions) a logging concession of 49,900 hectares in Saamaka territory to van Keyserberg Industrie N.V. (‘a subsidiary of a Malaysian/ Indonesian company that is one of a number of front companies that holds a variety of logging concessions in Suriname, all in indigenous and tribal territories and all recently granted’).35

In the other view, the Saamaka - drawing considerable strength from their culture, spirituality, and history of resistance as well as leaning on their victory before the Court - would insist on their own vision of the future. They would decide, after weighing the pros and cons, what sorts of development would be undertaken within their territory and what sorts of development would be kept out. In this view, Saamaka would remain largely masters of their fate, continuing the struggle their ancestors began three centuries ago. Their relationship to the government would in fact become (as the Saamaka people already consider it) like that of

many Indigenous peoples in the world who consider themselves ‘nations’ even while recognizing (as they always have) that they live within larger nation states and must maintain cordial and collaborative relationships with those states.36

Will the Saamaka people have the collective will and the organizational skills to play the strong hand that the Court has dealt them? Or will they join the long list of peoples who have become proverbial ‘victims of development’? And what stance will the new government in Paramaribo take toward its Maroon and Indigenous populations? The next few years will be decisive.

References

Haabo, V., 2010
‘The future.’ In: Th. Meijer zu Schlochtern & Ch. Cozier (eds), Paramaribo SPAN; Hedendaagse kunst in Suriname. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, p. 76.
Kambel, E.-R., 2002
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Price, R., 2011
Rainforest warriors; Human rights on trial. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Richard Price divides his time between rural Martinique and the College of William and Mary, where he is Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of American Studies and Professor of Anthropology and History. His awardwinning books include First-time (1983, 2002), Alabi's world (1990), The convict and the colonel (1998, 2006), and Travels with Tooy (2008). His most recent book is Rainforest warriors; Human rights on trial (2011).


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