As an example, there was a conflict between the U.S. and Greenland on the service maintenance contract at Pituffik Space Base, the so-called “Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, pursuant to the North Atlantic Treaty, concerning the defense of Greenland”. But Greenlandic politicians have always known that the motivation for the maintenance contract was the defense of the U.S. itself, something that had never been officially acknowledged. This can be seen in the debate of May 2020 in the Parliament of Greenland (Inatsisartut). This was in the context of President Trump’s first expression of his wish to buy Greenland.

There had been a conflict on the service maintenance contract at Pituffik since 2013, and Members of Parliament were debating the benefit to Greenland and the Greenlandic people, which had benefitted greatly from the contract until it was awarded to an American company. The conflict was resolved in 2020 when a negotiated statement said: “In view of Pituffik’s and Greenland’s key role in Greenlandic, U.S., and transatlantic security.” This was valuable to Greenland, and it was important for the U.S. that there was recognition that it also provided security for Greenland and NATO. It thus became established in an official document that Pituffik and Greenland play a key role in U.S. security.

Seat at the table

This would not have been possible if the Government of Greenland had not had a seat at the table. Greenland has been working diligently since the 1970s to gain a seat at the table with regard to the U.S. military presence, and has gradually been gaining access. This culminated in 2013 when Greenland had the power to stop official cooperation with the U.S. government as a response to the U.S. giving the Pituffik maintenance contract to a U.S. company. It is an example of absolutely having a seat at the table.

With the increased U.S. interest in Greenland since 2019, which has been exemplified by the style of Trump, that seat at the table has been cemented for the Government of Greenland, and Denmark can no longer make decisions regarding Greenland’s position and standing without consulting Greenland. However, the added challenge for Indigenous Peoples and colonized people has been precisely their lack of seat at the table. Greenland now holds a chair but perhaps with the caveat that this chair needs to be shared with Denmark.

Although States often talk of collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples and sub-state governments, because it sounds like the right thing to do, they tend to equate collaboration with “hearing”, “consultation” or asking for input on a decision after the fact. Decisions made by States are sometimes top-down decisions violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples where, if there were a common understanding of the conflict situation, they might have agreed with the decision. A key principle in cooperation between States and Indigenous Peoples is free, prior, and informed consent. However, this becomes impossible if classified information does not reach the Indigenous Peoples.

Collaboration and Cooperation

Collaboration means that all parties are working towards the same goal. States and Indigenous Peoples often do not want the same thing and are often in conflict. It is therefore not honest to talk of collaboration or consultation when trying to engage with Indigenous Peoples and the organizations representing them.

If States instead focus on cooperation, on ensuring the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the focus will be more honest. Acknowledging the different interests and wishes is the first step in a negotiation. Cooperation means that the parties do not necessarily want the same thing but can work together to each achieve their goal. This includes in post-conflict and conflict situations and in the context of defense and security policy.

A seat at the table therefore requires continued negotiation between the sub-state government and State governments, including Indigenous organizations. State governments therefore need to relinquish the privilege of State authority and monopoly.

A seat at the table therefore requires continued negotiation between the sub-state government and State governments, including Indigenous organizations.

Unfortunately, because marginalized people always have to fight for power, it puts demands on Greenland’s Indigenous Communities to educate themselves on security and defense terminology. This is because if Indigenous knowledge, priorities and expertise can be translated into terms that a four-star general can understand, they are more likely to listen. The Chief of Joint Arctic Command in Greenland, for example, understands that cooperation with hunters and fishermen is an operational necessity but he talks about it in terms of military vocabulary.

A seat at the table therefore requires continued negotiation between the sub-state government and State governments, including Indigenous organizations. State governments therefore need to relinquish the privilege of State authority and monopoly. Similarly, in matters of national security, Indigenous security must be respected as equally important for State security.

Free, Prior and Informed Consent and Narrative Warfare

It is important that information sharing ensures that Indigenous organizations and sub-state governments understand the State’s decision, and may be able to offer better solutions based on their knowledge on the ground. Most of all, it requires real cooperation, not after the fact engagement (which has unfortunately become frequent in recent years). In some places, this will require legislative changes to certain laws that govern who has access to classified information, and who can share what information with whom. Indigenous organizations and governments also need to study their own State’s defense and security apparatus, with the aim of understanding the language they use to make determinations on priorities.

On the other hand, there are a growing number and diversity of actors participating in matters of national security in the Arctic (including Indigenous organizations and sub-state governments), often with little to no experience of operating with classified intelligence. In this context, we must ask, why does information sharing matter, in particular with regard to Indigenous rights?

“Hybrid Warfare”: where, within the wider geo-strategic competition, there is a vying for international standing and positioning. Indigenous Peoples can become significant pawns in this type of narrative warfare.

“Hybrid Warfare”: where, within the wider geo-strategic competition, there is a vying for international standing and positioning.

One reason is the rise in what is called “below-the-threshold warfare”, aggression between nation-states that does not rise to the level of war. This is also known as “Hybrid Warfare”, where, within the wider geo-strategic competition, there is a vying for international standing and positioning. Indigenous Peoples can become significant pawns in this type of narrative warfare. For example, in its development and foreign policy, Finland identifies that it wants to promote and defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples. And yet, just last year, the Committee on the Rights of the Child had to tell Finland that it should respect the rights of the Sámi.

This type of hypocrisy becomes a narrative weapon against the West at large whenever Western countries try to criticize China, for example, on the rights of the Uyghur. The U.S. has also used these kinds of story in Greenland to justify their desire to help Greenland achieve independence from Danish colonialism. Canada and the Nordics have begun efforts of truth and reconciliation, and national security and State cohesion are motivating factors.

The Hybrid Warfare Danger of the Green Transition

It is finally important to note that these risks are not unique to the Arctic. There is an increasing risk of influence warfare aimed at disrupting the relationship between Indigenous organizations and governments. In Central and South America, nation-state action has often been motivated by a desire to exploit natural resources on Indigenous lands. When nation-states weigh their desires and needs against the rights of Indigenous People, the scale tips in favor of the States.

The transition to clean energy and renewables has increased the need for critical minerals, and it is not just States who are actors in this. The EU and NATO, for example, consider certain minerals and supply chains strategic. This has led some governments to speed up approval processes that were originally designed to protect the environment and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. States sometimes justify violations of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the name of national security and strategic priorities. This type of violation may then become a tool in influence campaigns.

Greenland used to be partly protected due to Google’s difficulty in translating to and from Greenlandic but large-scale language translation models are now changing that.

Greenland used to be partly protected due to Google’s difficulty in translating to and from Greenlandic but large-scale language translation models are now changing that.

These types of narrative can be avoided – and the risk of narrative warfare thus mitigated – through information campaigns. Cooperation, timely involvement of Indigenous organizations and sub-state governments, can thus mitigate the risk of disagreements being exploited. Sharing of classified information also ensures that States and the Indigenous organizations operate with the same situational awareness.

The threat of disinformation and foreign malign influence is increasing with the rise of AI and disinformation. Greenland, for example, used to be partly protected due to Google’s difficulty in translating to and from Greenlandic but large-scale language translation models are now changing that. As nation-states, allied nations and regional organizations operate more strategically to try and position themselves, they are increasingly ignoring the rights of Indigenous People in favor of their position and standing in geopolitics.

Some of the following were given as input during the EMRIP seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, December 3-5, 2025. It has been formatted as a memorandum.

The post The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Conflict and Post-conflict Situations: Lessons from Greenland appeared first on Debates Indígenas.

Amid the chaos, several homes of political leaders, including the prime minister’s, were torched as he and the home minister resigned. Many parliamentarians went missing for days. Iconic sites such as the Parliament and Supreme Court were also burned down. Although an interim government, formed after talks with Gen Z leaders, is slowly restoring services, the judiciary remains paralyzed—thousands of legal documents were destroyed, including several writ petitions filed by the Indigenous communities of Nepal.

One of these petitions is against a cable car project on a sacred mountain that the Indigenous Limbu community have historically identified as Mukkumlung, renamed about a century ago as Pathibhara, after a Hindu goddess. In more recent decades, Pathibhara has become a popular religious site for Hindu pilgrims. Mukkumlung forms part of the ancestral Limbu territory and is a sensitive geographic region as it borders Tibet (China) and Sikkim (India). It is also geologically sensitive as it forms part of the Himalayan formation, one of the most biodiverse ecological zones. To safeguard it, the Nepal government declared this zone as the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project in 1997.    

Development and green transition vs Indigenous sacred sites?

“I don’t think we should give up our sacred lands for the sake of development. We are not even going to give up our community forest, let alone our temples, shrines, and sacred spaces,”says Sarita Ghale of Khasur village, in Northern Nepal, in the short documentary Marsyangdi Wile Ri’iba: May you live as long as the river. The film explores the tensions between Indigenous ancestral wisdom, the agency of land’s invisible guardians and the relentless force of ‘progress’ driving Nepal’s hydropower economy. The Gurung language title is a blessing from the elders to the younger generation: “(…) may you live as long as the Simal tree, may you be as strong as the rocks in the Marsyangdi river”.

This short film forms part of the Twin documentary project “Human rights beyond the human?”, produced as part of the six-year interdisciplinary RIVERS research project (2019-2026), funded by the European Research Council (ERC). RIVERS examines the relationship between humans and nature and the role of law through fieldwork in Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala and the United Nations.  It’s Colombian twin, Aty Seikuinduwa: A Judge Between Worlds, follows the spiritual and legal journey of Indigenous Judge Belkis Izquierdo. This intimate portrayal of Aty Seikuinduwa, Judge Belkis’ spiritual name, meaning “mother beyond the darkness”, shows how she brings the living land, multiple life systems, and Indigenous spiritual practices into the courtroom.

What the Nepali government, which endorses the project, and the private company constructing it do not reveal is what would be lost in the process – a complete erasure of Limbu culture and destruction of nature.

What the Nepali government, which endorses the project, and the private company constructing it do not reveal is what would be lost in the process – a complete erasure of Limbu culture and destruction of nature.

Together, these two films challenge the dominant legal frameworks by foregrounding more-than-human voices and Indigenous jurisprudence, offering a powerful reflection on legal pluralism, spiritualism and resistance to extractivism. Overlapping with the concerns these documentaries raise, the cable car project exemplifies the latest onslaught of ‘development’ against sacred land. Registered under ‘Pathibhara Devi Darshan Private Limited’, a private company led by a Nepali billionaire, this 21-million USD project would connect the base of the mountain with its top, flying over the pilgrimage trail that currently snakes its way through the hilly forest, claiming acres of forest.

The company claims that this cable car would ease the pilgrims’ commute while boosting tourism and creating jobs, so ‘bringing development’ to Taplejung district. In such claims, what the Nepali government endorsing the project, and the private company constructing it, do not reveal is what would be lost in the process – a complete erasure of Limbu culture and destruction of nature through the ‘Disneyfication’ of the sacred land as resorts, cafes, hotels and a skating zone, all of which are planned for construction on top of the sacred site.

Bureaucratic and legal violence

As part of the post-war peace process following the end of Nepal’s decade-long ‘People’s War’ in 2006, the country ratified International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (1989) and endorsed the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007. These human rights instruments recognize Indigenous Peoples as collective-rights holders, including the right to self-determination, land, territory, and natural resources, and establish the right of FPIC – Free, Prior, Informed Consultation and Consent over decisions affecting their rights.

Initially, Nepal was hailed as a regional leader in Indigenous rights protection. It was the first Asian country to ratify ILO Convention 169 and, in its 2015 Constitution, explicitly recognized Indigenous Peoples’ rights.  The country also ratified the 1978 World Heritage Convention, and the 2010 Convention on Intangible Heritage; articles 26 and 34 of its Constitution furthermore protect communities’ rights to preserve religious sites and cultural practices.

Multilateral development banks and the Nepalese government systematically fail to uphold Indigenous rights, including FPIC, in major hydropower projects.

Multilateral development banks and the Nepalese government systematically fail to uphold Indigenous rights, including FPIC, in major hydropower projects.

Almost 20 years later, Nepal’s leadership has proved to be a false dawn. A recent report “Hanging by a Thread: Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Renewable Energy Transition”, published by Accountability Council and Lawyers’ Association of Human Rights of Nepali Indigenous Peoples, documents how multilateral development banks and the Nepalese government systematically fail to uphold Indigenous rights, including FPIC, in major hydropower projects.

Besides destroying sacred sites, the Nepal government, in endorsing the cable car project, has approved the cutting down of thousands of trees, destroying the habitat of threatened animal species and, in the process, dismantling the very reason why it created the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project in the first place. More recently, this has morphed into full-blown violence meted out against the peaceful community protestors. The armed police force has been deployed  to aggressively clamp down on protests, throwing tear gas canisters inside private houses in the middle of the night, destroying surveillance cameras, putting people behind bars, physically assaulting and opening fire on the protestors, and severely wounding people, while filing cases against the protestors for ‘creating unrest’.

Knowledge that comes from the territories

Nepal is now forging much-needed reforms on many fronts. Amid state-induced violence, the legal future of Mukkumlung rests in the hands of Nepal’s Supreme Court – which is currently literally rising from its ashes. Could this High Court finally transform Nepal’s leadership in Indigenous Peoples’ rights protection on paper into progressive jurisprudence, allowing the Limbu sacred mountain to win its legal battle? 

The innovative Indigenous jurisprudence of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace may offer new legal pathways for Nepal’s court cases on harm to Indigenous lands from development and green transition projects. Since its 1991 Constitution recognized ethnic and cultural diversity, Colombia has built a strong body of multicultural jurisprudence. Yet it was only in 2014 that the judiciary appointed its first Indigenous assistant magistrate, Belkis Izquierdo Torres—a historic milestone. Four years later, she became one of the 31 judges of the Peace Tribunal, alongside three other Indigenous judges.

“To recognize the Territory as a victim means acknowledging it is alive, that it is a sentient being, that it is a subject of rights”.

“To recognize the Territory as a victim means acknowledging it is alive, that it is a sentient being, that it is a subject of rights”.

Created as part of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), the JEP investigates and prosecutes cases linked to the armed conflict, which disproportionately affected Indigenous and Afro communities. These groups secured the inclusion of the Agreement’s late-added Ethnic Chapter, guaranteeing recognition of their rights and territories within the transitional justice process. In line with its victim-centered mandate, this tribunal has elaborated a participatory territorial based investigation methodology.

As Judge Belkis Izquierdo explains in the short film: ” [Judges] need to get out of the confines of the office a little … to feel, to smell the Territory. …. Our [Indigenous] knowledge comes not only from human reason; it comes from the Territories because knowledge is territorialized.”  The idea that land itself can be a bearer of legal knowledge stands in stark contrast to Nepal’s jurisprudence on Indigenous rights.  The judge adds: “To recognize the Territory as a victim means acknowledging it is alive, that it is a sentient being, that it is a subject of rights. That, within the context of the armed conflict, it has suffered, it has been damaged, and it is still in pain. And that it needs to have a voice in the judicial process so that this harm can be acknowledged and repaired.”

Could Nepal’s Supreme Court set a legal benchmark in South Asia?

This marks a significant legal milestone: it is now recognized that it is not only human beings, but also sacred sites, spiritual beings and their interrelationships that can suffer harm. Indigenous territories in Colombia are thus accorded rights to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition— rights previously reserved for individuals and groups affected by armed conflict.

In a similar vein, Nepal’s Supreme Court could consider an in-situ visit or a fact-finding mission to Mukkumlung to directly assess the territorial disputes and alleged violations. Over the past decade, the  Inter-American Court of Human Rights and several Latin American high courts have conducted similar visits to Indigenous and Afro communities, gathering additional evidence and hearing all parties involved. The Inter-American Court’s first in-situ visit took place in 2012 in the emblematic case Pueblo Indígena Kichwa de Sarayaku v. Ecuador, where the judges traveled by plane and canoe to hold proceedings within the Amazonian community’s territory. Since then, this regional Court has carried out 15 in-situ visits, six of them to Indigenous communities across Latin America.

If Indigenous movements worldwide are understood as a permanent struggle and resistance, the historic ruling in Colombia under Judge Belkis represents a monumental moment to which Nepal might aspire.

If Indigenous movements worldwide are understood as a permanent struggle and resistance, the historic ruling in Colombia under Judge Belkis represents a monumental moment to which Nepal might aspire.

Even though the Indigenous communities in Nepal remain skeptical about their country’s judicial system – often perceiving a structural bias against Indigenous cases – there a few alternatives but to turn to the national courts. The state has shown no political will to upholds its international human rights obligations. Indicatively, during a hearing in the Supreme Court in May 2025 on the cable car project, a company lawyer dismissed Indigenous claims over the sacred land by saying: “It is like listening to fiction and poetry … their argument belongs in the stone age”. The irony, one could argue, lies in how much such racist remarks sound archaic when compared to innovative legal practices, such as in Colombia, where a plurality of knowledge systems is integrated into environmental and Indigenous litigation.

As Shree Linkhim, one of the young Indigenous leaders of the #NoCableCar movement reflected in a private conversation: “When you think of it, this [the Indigenous movement] really goes beyond cancelling cable cars and hydropower projects. At the heart of it all, the struggle is really about pushing to transform the character of the Nepali state.” Easier said than done, but that is their resolve. If Indigenous movements worldwide are understood as a permanent struggle and resistance, the historic ruling in Colombia under Judge Belkis represents a monumental moment to which Nepal might aspire. Whether it ever gets there will depend on how the character and practice of the Nepali state and judiciary evolve in the wake of the Gen Z uprising and the upcoming 2026 elections that promise to reshape the country’s political landscape.

The post When Sacred Land Meets the Law: Stories of Legal Resistance from Nepal and Colombia appeared first on Debates Indígenas.