Motion to revoke Land CoI to be debated on Thursday

The 65th Sitting of the National Assembly, slated for Thursday, will feature heated debates in regard to the motion to revoke the Amerindian Land titling Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

Moved by the Parliamentary Opposition and listed under “private member’s business” on the Order Paper, the motion is premised on the belief that the commission’s mandate can undermine the legitimacy of Amerindian land rights and lead to the dispossession of present and future Amerindian land titles.

The motion highlights that, under the Amerindian Act 2006, Guyana already has a legal framework to address Amerindian land rights and communal land titling. In addition, it recognises that many Amerindian communities have been able to acquire communal titles.

Warning that establishing the CoI “appears to put Guyana on a collision course with its international rights and obligations”, the motion suggests that the National Assembly should invite the President to revoke the CoI.

Since announcement of its establishment, this CoI has been opposed on several fronts, including by representatives of Guyana’s indigenous population.

Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, had announced that the CoI would seek to resolve all the issues and uncertainties surrounding the individual, joint, or communal ownership of lands acquired by free Africans, and Amerindian land titling claims. But the National Toshaos Council (NTC) had, on March 28, argued that the two issues are unique and need to be addressed separately.

“While we support reparations and repatriation of African lands, and addressing that issue with a great degree of urgency, the Indigenous lands’ issue cannot, and should not, be viewed in the same light; nor can it be addressed under the same framework,” the NTC had emphasised.

The NTC had called for the establishment of two separate entities to deal with the two different issues, as it voiced its refusal to cooperative with the current lands CoI.

The NTC also complained of “severe” lack of consultations on the matter; an assertion which President David Granger has denied. The Head of State told reporters that the statement was “inaccurate”. He said, “The proposal to establish a body was announced by me in August last year at the National Toshaos Council meeting.”

To support his claim of having consulted with the indigenous people, President Granger also alluded to the fact that Attorney David James, a former Legal Adviser to the Amerindian People’s Association (APA), is a Commissioner on the CoI.

But even the APA has come out in criticism of Government’s land CoI. Other organisations, including the Guyanese Organisation of Indigenous Peoples, The Amerindian Action Movement, South Central Peoples Development Association, and the National Amerindian Development Foundation, have all protested the merging of the two issues under one blanket.

UN

The NTC has argued that it was not consulted on formulation of this CoI, and its members feel that their rights, as set out in Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), were violated.

Article 19 of the UNDRIP reads: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions, in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”

The CoI set up by the President is chaired by Reverend George Chuck-A-Sang and includes David James, Carol Khan-James, Professor Rudolph James, Lennox Caleb, Paulette Henry and Belinda Persaud.

The final report of this CoI is expected to be handed over to the President on or before November 1, unless an extension of time is granted.