Addressing climate vulnerability : promoting the participatory rights of indigenous peoples and women through Finnish foreign policy

Julkaistu versi

The Rights and Role of Indigenous Women in The Climate Change Regime

Climate change has direct and indirect consequences for individuals and their human rights (McInerney-Lankford et al. 2011). With the Arctic warming at twice the global rate, its inhabitants already experience many of these challenges. Marginalized groups, like women and indigenous peoples, are particularly vulnerable, with existing research providing evidence of ongoing and potential threats to their roles in community adaptation and in shaping change (Cameron 2011, Arctic Resilience Report 2016). While women’s rights are formally codified as human rights under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and indigenous peoples’ human rights are codified and recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous women’s rights are often neglected at both the international and local level. In this article, we apply an intersectional lens to demonstrate that indigenous and non-indigenous women are agents of change. In doing so, we examine how a human rights based approach might ensure indigenous women’s participatory role and legal status in the international climate change regime, as well as its related programs

Sámi Relationship with the Land : what Does the Law Fail to Recognize?

The purpose of this article is to make an overview on how UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), a monitoring body of CCPR, articulates and protects Sámi culture and its values. The further aim of this writing is to discuss Sámi people’s relationship with the Land, its ontological basis and the failure of Finnish legislation to recognize crucial aspects of this relationship and inherently connected worldview.publishedVersio

Saamelaisten alkuperäiskansaoikeudet ja saamelaiskulttuuria koskevien vaikutusten arviointi YVA-lain mukaisessa menettelyssä

Arktinen neuvosto hyväksyi ministerikokouksessaan vuonna 2019 ympäristövaikutusten arvioinnin toteuttamista arktisella alueella koskevat hyvän käytännön suositukset (Arktinen YVA-suositukset), joissa korostetaan merkityksellistä osallistumista, alkuperäiskansojen perinteisen tiedon roolia ja merkitystä sekä valtioiden rajat ylittäviä vaikutuksia. Tämän selvityksen tavoitteena on arvioida Arktinen YVA-suositusten toimeenpanon edellytyksiä Suomessa YVA-menettelyä koskevan olemassa olevan sääntelyn lähtökohdista. Keskiössä on saamelaisten alkuperäiskansaoikeuksien toteutuminen YVA-lain mukaisessa menettelyssä. Selvityksessä tarkastellaan myös saamelaisten perinteisen tiedon huomioon ottamista ja saamelaisten osallistumista YVA-menettelyssä, sekä kuvaillaan erilaisia malleja saamelaiskulttuuriin kohdistuvien vaikutusten arvioimiseksi. Selvityksen tavoitteena on pyrkiä parantamaan saamelaiskulttuuriin kohdistuvien vaikutusten ja niiden merkittävyyden tunnistamista ja jäsentämistä viranomaisissa sekä hankkeita suunnittelevissa tahoissa (hankkeesta vastaavat ja konsultit) ja siten tukemaan saamelaisten alkuperäiskansaoikeuksia toimeenpanevan YVA-menettelyn kehittymistä. Selvityksessä kuvaillaan nykykäytännön haasteita, viranomaisten tietotarpeita sekä esitetään suosituksia ja toimenpide-ehdotuksia

Philosophy of Law in the Arctic

This is rather the first book with a title Philosophy of Law in the Arctic in the literature. This philosophy of law is a very wide and cross-disciplinary area of research: between law, philosophy, anthropology, history, cultural ecology or environmental studies. I have no doubts that we have done such kind of philosophy in the academia so far, not using this term, but keeping up with the concept, the idea. The book is a result of research conducted by many members of the Sub-group of Philosophy of Law in the Arctic (the University of the Arctic). This team seems a very interdisciplinary academic group. Our cooperation bears fruit. The aim of the book is to define and systematise Arctic legal philosophy problems. In this book, there are five thematic parts. Each part consists of two-five short articles (we can call them also chapters or papers). These are the sixteen short articles all together. Each article consists of between six and fourteen pages. So going further, what we see in the book then is, in fact, a set of both theoretical and practical papers. The topics of these papers (chapters) are different as the authors are different while representing a wide-ranging scope of academic disciplines or specialisations. Each paper is followed by a relevant bibliography, which might be helpful for other scholars interested in the field. The seventeen writers come from such countries as Finland (4), Norway (1), Canada (3), Poland (3), Japan (2), Austria (1), Ireland (1), and England (2). Some of them have Arctic indigenous roots (3). In the end of the book, there is a very original attachment - the map of Arctic Canada.https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/faculty_books/1052/thumbnail.jp