Information about Suriname

It is highly a country multiétnico and 400 thousand inhabitants' pluricultural. It was Dutch colony up to 1975. The indigenous population is considered among 22 and 25 thousand inhabitants that belong especially to the people Kari'-to (Caribbean), Lokono (Arowakos) and Tareno (Trio) that are the most numerous.

The people Wayana, Akurio, Wai-Wai, Okomojana, Sikijana, Katujana, Mawajana, Alamajana and Sakykta are to the south of the country, in the frontier with Brazil, Guyana and French Guyana and knows them to him as "Amerindian of the High Lands". Those Kari'-to and Lokono lives to the north and you the flame "Amerindian of the Low Lands". this population's third part lives in the capital Paramaribo. In Suriname, also, the Maroons lives, a tribal town of African-American descending.

Most of communities live in a traditional way; they are devoted to the agriculture, to the hunt, the fishing. They also have their own government structures, with a boss and a "Council" of the village.

The organizational process

The fight for the rights of these people has advanced a lot from the civil war of 1986 - 1992, in which participated the Indigenous people as an independent group. After the elections of 1991, that took for the first time in two decades to a civil government to the power, an agreement of peace was signed between the government from Suriname of a part and the guerilla group Tucajana Amazones and the people Maroons, of the other one.

The OIS was established in 1992 after the signature this agreement. In him, the government committed to undertake the debates for the ratification of the Agreement 169 of the ILO and to demarcate territories for the Indigenous people and Maroons. Anything of this reality has been made and this has deserved the opposition of the Indigenous people.

The Council of Development Interior, reestablished formally in 1995, gives space to indigenous representatives, what has not impeded the problems in the measure that this instance is related of dependent way with the Ministry of Development Interior whose actions have been difficultly criticized by the indigenous movement.

The Maroons shares many of the problems and for this reason, them and the Indigenous people meet in the Grankrutu, a wide assembly where it are defined political and action strategies for both sectors.

Their rights in the constitution and international instruments

Suriname is among the few countries of the western hemisphere that it has not recognized in the constitution to the natives as people, subject of collective rights and legal possessors of its lands and ancestral territories. Neither it has ratified the Agreement 107 or the 169 of the ILO. Apart from some few laws that refer to "the interests of the villages of the interior", when there are timber or mining activities in those areas, recognition of its rights doesn't exist.

Due to the geographical and linguistic isolation of Suriname, the processes and the relative topics to the Indigenous people, the environment, the biodiversity and the rights of intellectual property are relatively unknown. Suriname ratified the Agreement about the biological diversity in 1995, but it has not still been made a lot in this respect to national scale.

The economy of Suriname crosses big difficulties, for what the pressure has been accentuated on the natural resources of the Amazonía. From 1994, the Indigenous people have opposed you systematically to the government's intents of surrendering in concession more than a million hectares of lands, most of which make part of the indigenous ancestral territories.

The mining activities and lumbermen in the indigenous territories have left disastrous consequences. It is considered that from 1993, two and half millions of hectares went open to the exploitation by means of contracts and concessions to different strange companies. A great number of Canadian companies has negotiated the access to areas located in the Amazonía, taking advantage of the fragile mining and environmental legislation. This situation has generated countless conflicts, because Suriname doesn't recognize any type of indigenous rights, what locates them in a very weak position in the negotiations with the extractive industries.

Another tendency preocupante is the search of medicinal plants for several transnational pharmaceutical companies, in collaboration with International Conservation that doesn't recognize the indigenous rights on its traditional knowledge. The government's intention of motivating in the Amazonía the ecoturismo, without having for anything the opinion neither the participation of the inhabitants, also causes fears.