To:
- President of India, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee
- Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi
- Minister of Tribal Affairs of India, Mr. Jual Oram
- Minister of Environment,Forests& Climate Change, Mr. Prakash Javadekar
- Lok Sabha Speaker, Smt. Sumitra Mahajan
- Chairman of Rajya Sabha, Shri Mohammad Hamid Ansari
- Lok Sabha leader, Mr. Rajnath Singh
- Leader of House, Rajya Sabha, Mr. Arun Jaitley
- National Human Rights Commission of India
- National Commission on Scheduled Tribes
- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Z.R.Z. Al Hussein,OHCHR
- Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, CESCR
- Committee on Civil and Political Rights, CCPR
- Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, CERD
- Committee on the Rights of the Child, CRC
- Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW
- CBD Executive Secretary, Mr. Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias
- Conference of Parties (CoP) of the Convention on Biological Diversity CBD
- Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council via the Special Rapporteurs (see more in detail below)
Honorable authorities of India and respected UN representatives
Please find attached an international appeal to India's President, Prime Minister, Tribal Minister, Environment Minister and Parliament leaders and to the United Nations treaty bodies and other UN governing bodies on human rights and biodiversity via the respective UN representatives and special procedures.
We are deeply concerned that what India tells to the world in Paris as if its 'promises' for climate and forests are in reality measures used rather to legitimise its plans to expand the removal of biodiverse forests for commercial monoculture plantations and for coal, bauxite and iron mining industries.
These measures threaten to further undermine customary sustainable sustainable use and conservation of forest biodiversity.and create increased danger of evictions, use of physical force and violations of human rights against the indigenous forest communities.
The signatories appeal thus to India and to competent UN organs to guarantee India's vulnerable indigenous forest communities' rights on lands, forests, biodiversity and ecosystems on which they live and which they have sustained.
These sustainable indigenous sources of forest life and biodiversity which secure life of vulnerable forest communities shall not be destroyed by mines, dams, timber, monoculture plantations or other commercial land use. By displacing vulnerable forest communities India would violate their human rights and also its obligations on indigenous and local communities' rights and practices of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Appeal to India and UN on indigenous forest communities' rights
Note: this appeal will be sent by fax to the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi, because we have not found any public e-mail address to him provided by the government websites
