Briefing Documents

Briefing documents are prepared by or for the Committee for Human Rights, reflecting the Committee's review of a serious human rights violation affecting a culturally distinctive people, when the case is egregious, extensive and complex. The document briefs the president of the American Anthropological Association who determines what action to take.

• The Committee has prepared a report on the critical situation of the Jarawa tribal minority in the Andaman Islands. As the result of cumulative pressures from the increasing settler population and a petition before the High Court of Calcutta, the Jarawa are under pressure to abandon their nomadic hunting and foraging way of life and to accept settlement and agricultural tutelage from the regional administration within their reserve. Such actions would violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements protecting indigenous peoples.



• The Pehuenche of southern Chile are being threatened by a series of hydroelectric dams planned for the Bío-Bío river. One dam has been built, and another, entailing the removal of about 1000 Pehuenche, is in final stages of preparation prior to ground-breaking. The initial dam was financed by the International Finance Corporation, a section of the World Bank Group. When problems developed, the IFC hired anthropologist consultant Theodore Downing to investigate, and then, prodded by the owner-power company, ENDESA, S.A., refused to allow Downing to disclose his findings to the Pehuenche, effectively preventing the Pehuenche from learning about plans affecting their cultural survival (March 1998).


Letters from AAA President Jane H. Hill to Dr. James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group and IFC, and Carole F. Lee, Vice President and General Counsel, IFC, are also provided, as is Dr. Wolfensohn's response to Dr. Hill
Also included is a comment from Dr. Scott S. Robinson, IFC consultant in the planning stage of the Pangue Project.


• In February 1996, Botswana government ministers announced at a community meeting in the central Kalahari that the reserve's residents would be required to leave the area. Local people reacted strongly to this request, arguing that they should be allowed to stay where they were. They pointed out that the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was established to protect the land--and resource--use rights of local people (May 1996).



• The signing of Decree 1775 by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on January 8, 1996, marked a drastic reversal of Brazilian policy on protecting the human rights of indigenous peoples and the natural environment throughout the country, but especially in the Amazon region, where most indigenous lands are located. Brazil's Giant Step Backward on Indigenous Rights is a report to the Committee by Terence Turner about the decree's effects on indigenous rights (February 1996).

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