Indigenous rights and the Mayan victory in Belize
by Kim Peterson

The Dominion    Translate This Article
2 February 2008

On 2 February 2008 The Dominion reported: At the end of last year, Belize's highest court reaffirmed Indigenous Peoples rights to their land, in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP). Global Good News service views this news as a sign of rising positivity in the fields of government and culture, documenting the growth of life-supporting, evolutionary trends.

The 'national government must recognize indigenous Mayans' tenure to land and refrain from any act that might prejudice their use or enjoyment of the land', the Supreme Court ruled.

This was a landmark ruling and a great victory for the Mayan people in Belize.

Previously the government in Belize gave rights to logging, oil, and hydro-electric concerns on traditional Mayan lands. As a result Mayan farmers were denied access to their ancestral lands. The Chief Justice of Belize, Abdulai Conteh, said that this did not abrogate the primordial rights of Mayan people to their land—allowing them to live, farm, hunt, fish, collect medicinal plants, and engage in ceremonies on land around their communities—practices that evolved over centuries.

In his ruling the Chief Justice noted that the occupation of a land over time confers title rights to the 'Original Peoples'. Mayan rights to their lands pre-date European colonization.

These concepts of property rights could have positive implications for Indigenous Peoples elsewhere.

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

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