UN Dishonest Broker

Public Good Project

August 10, 2014

 By Jay Taber

The announcement by the UN Secretary-General on this International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples that indigenous peoples can act as “powerful agents of progress” belies the fact that the UN — since adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 — has done everything in its power to see that indigenous nations and their delegates are excluded from meaningful participation at the UN. When indigenous diplomats have sought to contribute to discussions on climate change and industrial development in their territories, the UN has repeatedly used trickery and deceit to keep their voices silenced.

While it is technically true that as the Secretary-General says, “In order for them to contribute to our common future, we must secure their rights,” insinuating that the UN is actually working to do that is a fraudulent and misleading statement. If one looks at what UN agencies like the World Bank have done and are doing to indigenous peoples around the world, it is hard not to conclude that the Secretary-General’s bromides are nothing but a smoke screen to hide the UN’s real intentions–the assimilation of indigenous societies into the market system, and their eventual annihilation by modern states.

As noted in Netwar in the Big Apple: Wall St. vs the Indigenous Peoples Movement, psychological warfare by institutions like the UN includes the use of misleading statements (aka gray ops) to misdirect responsibility for the subjugation of indigenous nations by modern states. When the UN talks about its post-2015 development agenda, it is talking about totalitarian corporate control of the world’s resources, including those of indigenous peoples. When the Secretary-General did his part alongside Bill Gates, holding up the Millenium Development Goals banner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he was part of the largest swindle in the history of humankind.

While it is true that, as the Secretary-General said, that many UN member states act with impunity in violation of UNDRIP, it is often with the UN’s blessing. When the UN showcased UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues chair Grand Chief Edward John as an example of empowering indigenous peoples, they neglected to note that Chief John — as First Nations Summit chair – made it his mission to undermine First Nations sovereignty in British Columbia, Canada, thus expediting their assimilation through privatization of their lands and resources. Indeed, willingness to further the corporate agenda was an essential criteria for his appointment by the UN.

Extinguishing Sovereignty of indigenous nations by Wall Street, the UN, its PR puppets, and its member states involves trickery, subterfuge, violence and fraud. Psychological warfare, that misleads civil society activists into thinking the UN is an honest broker, leaves indigenous leaders open to attack. UN propaganda in the run-up to the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples next month in New York, is, like the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues — Designed to Deceive.

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice in such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]