Batchuluun Indigenous Rights
Mongolian Indigenous People and Land Privatisation Law
Indigenous people the world over have a tough time reclaiming native lands, even through freehold title. Check out this story from Mongolia's aborigines.
Early May 2003, five Batchuluun indigenous families in the Bayanzurkh District won legal title to their native lands under Mongolia’s Land Privatisation Law. Later that same month, officials of the Bayanzurkh District Land Office and the police forcibly tried to take the land back. When they failed, they came back and tried again three more times.
After that, the Mongolian United Federation of the Owners of Small and Medium Enterprises (MUFOSME). filed a complaint claiming title to the land with the Bayanzurkh District Court. The five families were legally required to respond to the complaint, but of course they do not have the money to hire a lawyer. Information about the eviction and their rights as landowners was withheld from them.
Besides contradicting Mongolia's own Land Privatisation Law, the attempts to evict these five families from their land violated, inter alia, their right to adequate housing; i.e., to a secure place to live in peace and dignity. The Mongolian authorities especially violated these citizens' formal entitlements to security of tenure, and the right to information, freedom from dispossession, participation, compensation, and physical security. All are elements of the right to adequate housing, as recognised in international law.
Also, the authorities breached Mongolia's treaty obligations under articles 2, 4, and 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which the State ratified on 18 November 1974. Not to mention articles 12, 13, 17, 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is the same story the world over. If colonial law cannot ensure basic rights for the world’s indigenous peoples, then can we be reasonably expected to submit to that law?
