Protecting Indigenous Land against Logging Companies in Suriname

South and Central America: Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini, Pikin Slee Village and Paramaribo, Suriname: To fight logging on their traditional lands, Eduards, a tribal leader, and Jabini, a law student, have organized their Saramaka communities, leading to a landmark ruling for indigenous and tribal peoples throughout the Americas to control resource exploitation in their territories.

Head Captain Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini in San Francisco

Located in the Amazon Basin, Suriname has opened up its tropical forests to extractive industries. It is the only country in the Americas that does not recognize indigenous or tribal peoples' rights to own and control their traditional territories.

The tribal peoples are Maroons, the descendants of African slaves who won their freedom and established autonomous communities in the rainforest in the late 17th to mid-19th centuries. The Saramaka are a group of Maroons who live in 9,000 square kilometers of rainforest. In 1963, they lost almost half their traditional territory to a hydroelectric dam built to power an Alcoa bauxite factory. Many Saramaka were displaced and remain in resettlement camps. Others established new villages on the Upper Suriname River.

In the late 1990s, the Surinamese government allowed logging companies to set up speculation projects and camps in the region, against Saramaka wishes.

The Saramaka were told they would be imprisoned if they tried to stop the loggers. Eduards and Jabini organized meetings, first with the affected communities and later with all Saramaka communities.

The communities established the Association of Saramaka Authorities to better defend their lands and promote their rights. ASA filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR, in October 2000.

When the Suriname government failed to completely suspend the logging projects and comply with the other recommendations of the IACHR, the commission took the claim to the Inter-American Court, a legally binding body of which Suriname is a member.

The judgment of the Court in Saramaka People v. Suriname provides the basis for the legal recognition and protection of Saramaka territory with respect to land rights and prior informed consent, and also creates a legal framework for the rights of all indigenous and tribal peoples in Suriname.

In January 2008, the Suriname government declared that it would fully implement the judgment of the Inter-American Court.

In the ruling, which applies across the hemisphere, the Court held that resource exploitation concessions may only be granted in indigenous or tribal territories subject to four conditions: indigenous and tribal peoples' effective participation must be secure; there must be reasonable benefit-sharing; there must be a prior environmental and social impact assessment; and states have a duty to implement adequate safeguards and mechanisms in order to ensure that these activities do not significantly affect the traditional lands and natural resources of indigenous and tribal peoples.