INTERNATIONAL DECADE OF WORLD'S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

VATICAN CITY, OCT 23, 2003 (VIS) - The Program of Activities of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples was the item under discussion yesterday before the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. Holy See observer to the U.N., Archbishop Celestino Migliore, was one of the speakers who addressed this topic.

"I wish to reaffirm," began the nuncio, "three convictions in which my delegation firmly believes: First, the right to development is inherent in every person, group or nation and the world's 370 million indigenous people have the same claim to development as all the rest; Second, development, for it to be truly human, should be integral, comprising all its multidimensional aspects: economic and social, political and cultural, moral and spiritual; it has to be both individual and collective, personal and shared; ... Third, the indigenous people themselves must be architects of their own development."
Archbishop Migliore said these convictions should be guided by "firm principles," notably "refraining from using criteria foreign or unacceptable to the identity of those concerned" and "involving the indigenous people in the various stages of the projects, from feasibility studies to implementation, from evaluation to readjustments."

Noting that the decade for indigenous peoples ends in 2004, the archbishop said "the Holy See remains committed to the cause" of "enabling the indigenous people to regain their distinct place."

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