Rejecting Bangladesh's concerns over a report on the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord of 1997 by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has adopted it.In its general segment session ended on July 29 in Geneva, ECOSOC, the parent body of UNPFII, said that it would not delete any paragraph of the report, prepared by a UN rapporteur Lars-Anders Baer on the execution of the accord.
Bangladesh had expressed its concerns in the 10th session of UNPFII in May-end over the forum going beyond its mandate in dealing with the issue of implementation of the CHT accord on the ground that "there are no indigenous peoples in the region".
Bangladesh first secretary to the UN Iqbal Ahmed also raised objections over several points of the report including paragraphs 56 and 58A, which asks the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN to develop a mechanism to strictly monitor and screen the human rights records of national army personnel prior to allowing them to participate in peacekeeping operations.
These paragraphs also recommend that the UN prevent human rights violators and alleged human rights violators in the security forces of Bangladesh.
Foreign minister Dipu Moni on July 26 said that Bangladesh was concerned that the 'tribal' people or ethnic minorities in the CHT region were being described as 'indigenous peoples' of the country.
They were wrongly called 'indigenous peoples' in the two paragraphs of the report, she stressed.
At separate meetings with ambassadors and media editors, she said, "The ethnic minorities in the CHT region have been clearly termed as 'Tribal' in the 1997 peace accord, but there are attempts by some vested quarters to establish them as 'indigenous' in some international and UN forums."
ECOSOC said it would not distinguish between indigenous and tribal groups, as highlighted by the Bangladesh government, or take into account its challenge to the jurisdiction of the forum to deal with the CHT peace accord, a statement by the International Council for the Indigenous Peoples of CHT (ICIP-CHT) said on Sunday.
The UNPFII at the end of its session had called on the Bangladesh government to undertake a 'phased withdrawal' of temporary army camps from the CHT, declare a timeframe for implementation of the peace accord and establish an independent commission to inquire into human rights violations perpetrated against the inhabitants of the region as per the 1997 CHT Peace Accord.
The Bangladesh government gave statements in support of its position, and so did the other fifty-four members of ECOSOC. But as Bangladesh lacked backing from other ECOSOC member-states, it went for a 'compromise.'
Some of the several concerns raised by Bangladesh would be included as 'noted', in the nature of a 'footnote', the statement said quoting the ECOSOC.
Reportedly, only China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported some of the concerns raised by Bangladesh. Even though Russia showed some leaning towards Bangladesh's stance, they reiterated the importance of the role of indigenous peoples on the international human rights agenda.
"The region is still heavily militarised and there are reports that the military is carrying out gross violations of indigenous human rights," Lars-Anders Baer said while presenting his study report on the implementation of the CHT Peace Accord 1997.
The former UNPFII member said impunity prevailed in the area and stressed that the violators be brought to the justice.
The peace accord between the then Awami League government and Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) ended the decade-long bush war between the local inhabitants and the army.
Of some 500 temporary army camps, 200 had been withdrawn by the governments in phases until 2007, and 34 in August and September last year. The six permanent cantonments are still there.
