The Indigenous Peoples Caucus has been working around the clock these past two weeks to advance text on Article 6, climate finance, gender, and mechanisms that support a rights-based framework. However, as we move towards the final days of the COP26, and many of the negotiation tables are asserting their final positions, some in civil society have switched their focus to influencing the Cover Decision.
So can the Cover Decision be a saving grace for inclusion of our rights, or is it merely a glossy Cover Up over a COP that has already failed communities on the frontlines?
With real opportunities on negotiation items dwindling, for some, the Cover Decision has become a final glimmer of hope, where civil society may be able to find a home for strong human rights language, commitments to cutting fossil fuel extraction, and other essential demands that have thus far failed to materialise at COP26. The Indigenous Peoples Caucus maintains that inclusion in the Cover Decisions is better than no inclusion at all, but we know that even the strongest and most justice-focused Cover Decision risks merely window-dressing a failed COP if we give up advocating for our rights to be included elsewhere.
For Indigenous Peoples, the Cover Decision must center a rights-based approach that uplifts the distinct rights of Indigenous Peoples and remains in line with the minimum standards of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Any regression on these minimum standards risks COP26 falling woefully short on its promise to be the ‘People’s COP’, with no meaningful protection for human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. We have already seen Parties actively remove rights-based language in the ACE room, and in others, our rights are still imprisoned by square brackets. We have been working too hard, and our communities have sacrificed too much for Parties to backpedal on our rights in these negotiations.
Human rights and Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Cover Decision is our red line, and we will fight to the last breath of this COP to protect it.
Fully supporting Indigenous Peoples requires strong human rights language and ensuring that rights of Indigenous Peoples are at the centre of all decisions at COP26 – from Article 6, to Loss and Damage, to the Cover Decision. This means explicit references to the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and specific references to the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, supported by the recent decision at the Human Rights Council.
These declarations, signed and affirmed by a majority of Parties in attendance, have already paved the way for the protection and safeguarding of our rights. We deserve fully operational and explicit language that can be used to hold Parties accountable.
Additionally, the draft Cover Decision text fails to adequately address the need for a just transition away from fossil fuels to reach 1.5°C and protect our communities. Instead, the current text falls flat in only mentioning coal and subsidies of fossil fuels as part of the phase out and just transition strategy, thereby sanctioning the continuation of destructive fossil fuels extraction. This amounts to a light slap on the wrist for these extractive industries who are responsible for and continue to profit from the growing climate crisis, all the while appropriating and destroying Indigenous lands and enacting gender-based violence, criminalization, and assassination on our frontline land defenders. This is an even more important rights issue when we consider that fossil-fuelled violence disproportionately harms Indigenous Women, Girls, Queer, Trans, and 2 Spirited peoples, as we heard in the powerful Gender Day MMIW memorial earlier this week.
We must end negotiations this week with clear commitments from Parties that ensure the protection of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples in all decisions, including the Cover Decision
#DeleteTheBrackets, not human rights.