ow are we to treat a people who, by definition, part of the land, yet remain unacknowledged? What do their entitlements mean? Routine understanding of the indigenous peoples relates to those who have been related to a land since times of antiquity. What parameters should one use to define ‘indigenous’? Claims to traditional lands often arise in cases of eviction. Where a clear understanding of who qualifies for the description is lacking, it is difficult to determine whose relationship with the land should be protected.

There is no universally accepted definition. As such no definition is globally binding. Several criteria have been proposed for determining what “indigenous” may consist of. Martínez Cobo’s Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations proposes historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies; distinctness from dominant society; non-dominant status; the transmission of ancestral territories and ethnic identity; and the maintenance of their own cultural patterns, social institutions and, where applicable, legal systems. The second part relies on the community itself: an indigenous person belongs to such a population through self-identification and is recognised and accepted by that population as one of its members.

Set against the criterion of historical continuity, indigeneity in our own context can appear skewed, obscured often by religious identity and caste, embedded in our collective memory through centuries of transition into present identities. In most cases, the current identities predate the colonial period and have persisted. In most cases, they are the grounds on which these communities are discriminated against. Zubair Torwali, an indigenous rights activist, has described indigeneity as a group’s claim to a particular land as its first natives: distinct in practice, holding traditional land rights, speaking an endangered language and marginalised through successive periods of colonisation. He stresses that the struggle for recognition carries political contestation over the definition itself.

In international law, Cobo’s criteria were carried into the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). It treats self-identification as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which it applies. Pakistan ratified the Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 (No. 107) in 1960. Convention 169 removed the regressive premises of that text, including forced assimilation. However, Pakistan has not ratified the latter. Pakistan did vote for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, which carries the provision for Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Can a state be made liable to the rights of the indigenous when the constitution recognises no such category? We have scheduled caste classifications and religious minorities, but a claim to being an indigenous cultural minority can be a complex, political debate.

Indigenous rights protections become an unavoidable subject of concern as displacement caused by major development projects falls hardest on those already discriminated against on account of their identity. Moving abruptly from a familiar environment to a wholly different one demands a radical change in patterns of living they have been culturally and economically accustomed to in their specific location. If they are not handled with extra care, they may perish. That is the greatest vulnerability of the indigenous. It matters most when a state marks a site for development and compels its residents to leave their habitat.

Convention 107 of the International Labour Organisation, which has binding force in Pakistan, protects members of tribal and semi-tribal populations, locating the right in the individual, rather than the community.

The Musallis, who originally lived in the Thal desert, were displaced by the settlement of migrants that followed the construction of the Thal Development Authority Canal in 1956. Having made their living producing household items specific to their location, they were reduced, once displaced, to begging and to cleaning streets, sanitary drains and toilets. The fishing peoples of the middle Indus have met a similar fate. The Kihals and Mors, living between the Chashma and Taunsa barrages across Dera Ismail Khan, Layyah and Dera Ghazi Khan, have lost their livelihoods as the dams, barrages and canals built after the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 cut the flow of fish into the traditional streams and lakes.

These cases are documented in the 2012 Country Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues for Pakistan, published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the United Nations specialised agency and international financial institution working to reduce rural poverty and hunger. The note raised serious concerns about international financial institutions, the World Bank in particular, which advocated to invest heavily in water development and pressed for further investment in large dams. The projects generated new revenue — sugar mills, corporate farming, hydropower and commercial fishing — while cutting the tribal peoples’ food supply and traditional livelihoods and restricting their mobility within the barrages. Its author goes further, saying that neither the World Bank nor the Asian Development Bank has ever applied its indigenous peoples policy in Pakistan.

The Torwali resistance the Madyan Hydropower Project concerns a historical attachment to the land “going back generations.” The community claims the World Bank funded project had not complied with Free, Prior and Informed Consent, the standard set out in the Bank’s Environmental and Social Standard 7, which governs projects affecting indigenous peoples. It has instead applied Investment Project Financing since October 1, 2018. A lack of understanding has made the process dubious, particularly in that the protocols have been evaded and the vulnerable indigenous communities were not made part of the consultations.

A political will to hear out the concerns of the indigenous tribes is lacking. It is feared that these concerns will die down in the noise of establishing more provinces. A recognition of the indigenous identity, especially with an aim to acknowledge their vulnerability is essential. Pakistan must move towards making their self-identification a fundamental criterion, as Cobo proposed. International Labour Organisation’s Convention 107, ratified and binding in Pakistan, protects members of tribal and semi-tribal populations rather than those populations as peoples, locating the right in the individual rather than the community. However, a claim to ancestral land and resources is collective by nature.

The criteria produced by international consensus on what constitutes indigeneity are necessarily generalised. It is the unique socio-economic and political concerns of a community that make it distinct. Only a domestic understanding can close the gaps in perception on this topic. The state must protect the people.

The writer is a rights advocate based in Islamabad. She can be reached at [email protected]