INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE & GOVERNANCE RECOVERY

Monday, May 21, 2012

LAW-Defense, UT School of Law Human Rights Clinic, and UBCO Professor Partner on U.N. CERD Submission | Expose Increased U.S. Human Rights Violations along Texas-Mexico Border Wall

(El Calaboz, TX) On May 10, 2012, in another historic move, the Human Rights Clinic, School of Law, at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Dr. Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache Band of Texas; Faculty of Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan), and alongside the Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense), submitted a request for consideration under Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Addressed to Ms. Grabiella Habtom, Secretary of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland, the authors submitted a 134-page critical legal analysis of the United States’ human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and severely marginalized Latinos. In extensive detail, the brief exposes and underscores how the border wall and militarization have severely impacted all life along the Texas-Mexico border, and raises the critical perspectives of impacted peoples, several who provided affidavits, who call into question the legitimacy of the U.S. uses of controversial legislation, armed force, coercion, and eminent domain in the hostile dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands, territories and resources.

The group plans to host an international telephonic press conference to discuss the key issues and purpose of the legal brief, the recommendations to the U.N.CERD, hoped-for outcomes, and the need to inform and educate the public and the international legal system about the U.S. government's human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples, Native Mexican Americans, and marginalized Latino peoples who live and work along the Texas-Mexico border.

See full text of the submission to U.N. CERD here:

U.N. CERD Texas-Mexico Border Wall Request-UT LAW HR CLINIC-LAWDEFENSE-MTAMEZ
Please stay tuned for details regarding the International Press Teleconference, forthcoming.