Ecuador to host Indigenous summit seeking enforcement of court's human rights rulings
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a regional tribunal that holds governments accountable for upholding human rights, has made decisions backing Indigenous peoples' rights — including to their ancestral lands, which they consider essential to preserve their culture and way of life — which are not being implemented by Latin America governments.
There is growing concern that without stronger legal protections, government enforcement and adequate resources, the Costa Rica-based court's rulings will remain largely symbolic.
Leaders from across the region will gather for a summit from May 21-25 in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the obstacles to enforcing Inter-American Court rulings.
The main aim will be to issue a collective statement calling on governments and institutions to ensure justice and territorial protection.
'This is very important for us because there are constitutional guarantees that favor Indigenous peoples. Even so, there has not been full compliance with the rulings,' Tulio Renato Viteri Gualinga, head of international relations for the Sarayaku Indigenous community, told The Associated Press.
Nataly Yepes, a legal advisor for Amazon Watch, an organization that works to protect the rainforest, said the summit, which will be hosted by the Kichwa community of Sarayaku, marks a rare and valuable moment where Indigenous knowledge will inform discussions on strengthening justice systems across Latin America.
'What we hope is that this won't just be a one-off event, but rather the first step toward building an alternative and critical approach to traditional justice systems,' Yepes said, adding that that in times of democratic, institutional, and climate crises, Indigenous wisdom offers essential perspectives for more inclusive and resilient legal systems.
Indigenous peoples, who in many cases have successfully managed and protected lands for millennia, have long argued that ensuring territorial rights is a climate solution. That argument has gained traction in international climate circles in recent years, though respective governments are sometimes slow or simply opposed to granting more territorial rights.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights rules on human rights violations across Latin America and the Caribbean. Its decisions are legally binding for member states of the Organization of American States, but enforcement often depends on political will at national level.
Last month, the court condemned Ecuador for failing to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples in Yasuní National Park. In 2017, it ruled against Colombia for allowing oil exploration on U'wa ancestral lands without proper consultation.
Other countries — including Nicaragua, Paraguay, Suriname, Argentina and Honduras — have also faced similar rulings, though enforcement across the region has often been slow or incomplete due to lack of political will, bureaucratic delays, and weak institutions.
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The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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A so-called 'like-minded group' of oil-producing countries said it would not accept legally binding obligations and opposed a wide range of provisions that other nations said were essential, including controls on new plastic production, as well as mandatory disclosures and phaseouts of hazardous chemicals used in plastics. During a plenary on August 9, three observers independently told Grist that the negotiations felt like Groundhog Day , as countries reiterated familiar talking points. A norm around consensus-based decisionmaking discouraged compromise from all countries, though the like-minded group—which includes Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, among other countries—was particularly intransigent and understood it could simply block proposals rather than shift its positions. 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PICTURE Caption: Tuvalu's delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, during a plastics treaty plenary meeting in Geneva. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist 'We cannot ignore the gravity of the situation,' a negotiator from Madagascar said. 'Every day, our oceans and ecosystems and communities are suffering from the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.' Tuvalu's delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, said failing to enact a treaty means that 'millions of tons of plastic waste will continue to be dumped in our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, food security, livelihoods, and culture.' Still, without a change in the negotiations' format—particularly around decisionmaking—it's unclear whether further discussions will be fruitful. The norm around 'consensus-based decisionmaking means the threat of a vote can't be used to nudge obstinate countries away from their red lines; unless decisionmaking by a majority vote is introduced, then this dynamic is unlikely to change. 'This meeting proved that consensus is dead,' said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a coalition of health and environmental organizations. 'The problem is not going away.' Why is it so hard to make progress on a plastics treaty? Procedural rules for the plastics treaty negotiations say that, for substantive issues, delegates 'shall make every effort' to reach agreement by consensus. Otherwise they can vote by a two-thirds majority, but only as a 'last resort.' When delegates sought to clarify these rules during the second round of talks in 2023, there was so much disagreement that it sank several days of negotiation. The result is that delegates have defaulted to consensus for everything, fearful of broaching the subject and losing even more of their limited negotiating time. Yet consensus-based decisionmaking is also one of the main reasons that the negotiations have gone so slowly: Oil-producing countries have used these rules to their advantage to either stall or water down interim agreements at each round of negotiations, frustrating progress even when they're greatly outnumbered. Other nonprofits and advocacy groups staged several silent protests during the Geneva talks raising this same point, displaying signs reading, 'Consensus kills ambition.' Senimili Nakora, one of Fiji's delegates, said during the closing plenary that 'consensus is worth seeking if it moves us forward, not if it stalls the process.' Switzerland's negotiator, Felix Wertli, said that 'this process needs a timeout,' and that 'another similar meeting may not bring the breakthrough and ambition that is needed.' Other countries raised broader concerns about 'the process' by which negotiations had proceeded. Meetings had been 'nontransparent,' 'opaque,' and 'ambiguous,' they said during the plenary, likely referring to unclear instructions they had received from the secretariat, the bureaucratic body that organizes the negotiations. Inger Andersen, the UN Environment Programme's executive director, told reporters on Friday that it at least had been helpful to hear countries more clearly articulate their red lines. 'Everyone has to understand that this work will not stop, because plastic pollution will not stop.' PICTURE Caption: Observers sit outside the assembly hall at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, waiting into the early hours of the morning for plenary to start. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist The plastics industry, which has opposed controlling plastic production and phasing out groups of hazardous chemicals, said it would continue to back a treaty that 'keeps plastics in the economy and out of the environment.' Marco Mensink, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement: 'While not concluding a global agreement to end plastic pollution is a missed opportunity, we will continue to support efforts to reach an agreement that works for all nations and can be implemented effectively.' Environmental groups, scientists, and frontline organizations were disappointed to leave Geneva without an ambitious treaty. They said it would have been worse, however, if countries had decided to compromise on key provisions such as human health and a 'just transition' for those most likely to be affected by changes to global recycling and waste management policies, including waste pickers. Under the circumstances, they applauded delegates for not agreeing to the final version of the chair's text. 'I'm so happy that a strong treaty was prioritized over a weak treaty,' said Jo Banner, cofounder of the US-based organization The Descendants Project, which advocates to preserve the health and culture of the descendants of enslaved Black people in of a swath of Louisiana studded by petrochemical facilities. 'It feels like our voices have been heard,' added Cheyenne Rendon, a senior policy officer for the US nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples' rights and the use of Indigenous science. PICTURES (x2) Caption: Protestors gather outside the Palais des Nations in Geneva, during talks for a global plastics treaty. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist Caption: Advocacy groups call for delegates to make decisions by voting, not consensus, at plastics treaty negotiations. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist By contrast, observers' voices were literally not heard during the final moments of the concluding plenary in Geneva. After more than two hours of statements from national delegations, Valdivieso turned the mic over to a parade of young attendees, Indigenous peoples, waste pickers, and others who had been present throughout the week and a half of talks. But only one speaker—from the Youth Plastic Action Network—was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting. It is now up to the plastics treaty secretariat to set a date and time for another round of negotiations, which are not likely to happen until next year. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the UN Environment Assembly meeting in December, where Andersen is expected to deliver a report on the negotiations' progress—or lack thereof—and which could present an opportunity for the like-minded countries to lower the ambition of the treaty's mandate: the statement spelling out what the treaty is trying to achieve. Some environmental groups fear that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the 'full life cycle' of plastics, but just plastic pollution—thus turning the treaty into a waste management agreement rather than one that addresses the full suite of plastics' harms to health and the environment, including during the material's production. Banner said she doesn't feel defeated; in fact, she's 'more passionate than ever' to keep fighting for legally binding restrictions on the amount of plastic the world makes. 'I'm planning to survive,' she added, and to do that, 'we have got to stop the production of plastic.'
