Bolivian Indigenous People Halt Highway

In a protest against a multinational highway project through the Amazon, Indigenous Bolivian groups have halted planned construction through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). Note that part of the issue are the rights guaranteed in ILO Convention 169, of which Bolivia is a signatory.

Two main concerns lie behind the indigenous protests of the highway: its environmental effects, as well as the indigenous community’s frustration with facing deadlock in their attempts to gain access to the decision-making process.

The TIPNIS...was recognized as indigenous territory in 1965. Such legal recognition provides the 49,000 indigenous residing in the park with the right to participate, by consultancy, in any governmental decision that could affect the integrity of their territory. What’s at stake, therefore, is more than the highway itself: indigenous jurisdictional recognition in general. Bolivia is among the Latin American countries that has ratified Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) regarding indigenous population rights. One of the convention’s points is the need to guarantee consultation “whenever consideration is being given to their capacity to alienate their lands” and that “peoples must be consulted [previously] whenever consideration is being given to legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly.” Consequently, so far as it has kept indigenous communities out of the decision-making process about the highway, the Bolivian government is breaking an international convention.