Description
- ITEM 3: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on cultural rights (Cont’d)
SPEAKER
Society for Threatened Peoples, Ms. Zumretay Arkin
Madam President,
We thank the Special Rapporteur for a report that speaks directly to one of the gravest cultural rights crises today: the systematic dismantling of Uyghur cultural life.
For centuries, the landscapes of the Tarim Basin — from the Taklamakan Desert to the Tianshan mountains — have shaped Uyghur identity, spirituality, and ecological knowledge. Yet across this region, communities have faced forced displacement, demolition of mosques and sacred sites, prohibitions on cultural and religious practice, and the rupture of intergenerational knowledge transmission. This is not incidental harm. It is the destruction of biocultural heritage inseparable from the environment itself.
Your central finding — that conservation and development policies too often proceed without free, prior and informed consent — is directly relevant. Large-scale land transfers, infrastructure projects, and so-called “ecological migration” programmes have relocated hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs from ancestral lands without meaningful consultation. These measures are framed as environmental protection or poverty alleviation.
At the same time, international climate and green development finance continues to flow into the region without credible cultural rights impact assessments or access to grievance mechanisms.
We ask: how can your framework on FPIC and cultural rights be applied where independent monitoring is blocked and affected communities are silenced?
Thank you.
Source:
UN WEB TV，16th Meeting – 61st Session of Human Rights Counci， https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k16/k16m3v65mz。
