Rapa Nui
1
UNITED NATIONS NEW YORK HEADQUATERS
MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
February 3-7- 2014
Rapa Nui Intervention
Iorana, your Excellencies, co chairs and fellow right-holders,
Presented by: Santi Hitorangi
I am advocating for Moana Nui a network of pacific wide rights-holders focusing on
justice issues concerning resources, trade, militarization and indigenous rights. In my
capacity as a member of the Hitorangi clan from Rapa Nui, I am here to put forward our
mana’u over the eight Millennium Development Goals addressing poverty and hunger,
universal education, gender equality, child mortality reduction, maternal health, access to
medicines, environmental sustainability and the global partnership for development.
These are all sectors of development that Rapa Nui has been denied, or have not
adequately been provided for by Chile. Otherwise known as Easter Island, Rapa Nui is
3,700 kilometers from the coast of Chile, and claimed as a territory in 1888 under
fraudulent circumstances. We are a nation struggling for self-determination, and seek to
be recognized by the UN to be placed on the list of Non Self Governing Territory for
decolonization.[i] We represent an indigenous struggle, a human rights struggle, and a
struggle to protect our traditional resources and ecological biodiversity throughout our
Pacific Island Communities.
Chile is one of the original signatories of the Trans Pacific Strategic Economic
Partnership, or the TPP, and they are negotiating in the largest free-trade agreement in the
world with 12 other countries.i Together these 12 countries represent nearly 28 trillion
dollars, about 40% of global GDP.ii
Rapa Nui is rich in natural capital. We have the land and resources to establish a
ssustainable economy while participating in the larger global economy. We have the
practical knowledge to make use of our natural capital and resources efficiently. We
Moana Nui have strong social decision making processes, rooted in our traditional
2
knowledge. For these reasons, Rapa Nui possesses the means to have a viable,
independent economy. Yet, we are not independent. It is also very difficult under the
current circumstances to establish our viability as an independent state because we do not
control the statistics by which GDP is calculated. Our economic indicators are subsumed
within those of other Chilean provinces in the Valpariaso region. And even if we did have
our own GDP, Rapa Nui would be classified as a “low-income economy” according to
World Bank economic indicators.iii
Against our consent, transnational corporations have been developing projects, that do
not benefit us, and that threaten our very existence, and the integrity of our land and
livelihoods.iv Rapa Nui is a world-renown tourist destination, and transnational
corporations continue to profit off our cultural resources while the nearest adequate
hospitals are in Santiago, hours away by plane. The TPP creates conditions for investors
to build ports, expand the already large airport, and privatize our land and resources using
Chilean military forces and kangaroo courts to protect their investments. The TPP and
other State- driven investment agreements continue to alienate us from our indigenous
lands by binding us to transnational corporations through agreements signed by the state
of Chile, and not by the Rapa Nui people who are the proper rights-holders.v
I would like to express our gravest concern that just as the TPP is an agenda for
privatization driven by corporations seeking to profit from our indigenous heritage and
properties, the MDG Global Partnership for Development is the doorman who greets
them, holds the door open and gives them the keys to our house.
This is not to say that every corporate intercourse with a developing nation is
exploitative, but history suggest that trade partnerships are not entered into for the
purpose of protecting indigenous rights, but for the purposes of guaranteeing access to
natural resources and markets. Low- income countries are signing the World Bank
Development Partnerships on the hope and belief that some benefit will come to them.
Instead, governments are opening the door for privatization of our natural resources
without our consent.
3
Last December, the WTO Bali meeting produced a declaration adopting new global trade
agendas: one of them is what is called a “services waiver” to least developed countries.vi
The services waiver will expand market access to developing countries benefiting
transnational corporations through service sectors like accounting, biotech, finance,
insurance, education, intellectual property, climate-related technologies, and information
and communication technologies.
As a small island that is seeking to be independent, we are not convinced that
privatization initiatives and investment agreements will provide the best options for our
food security, education, healthcare, environment and our indigenous resources. In
practice, Investor State agreements will take a low-income country to court for trying to
nationalize and protect our resources from the demands of the global market. Why should
building our infrastructure bind us to transnational corporate investment?vii
Another serious concern is that we do not have access to a court to dispute these kinds of
corporate investment rules. What access do low-income countries have to challenge
investment agreements in international courts if we are continually blind-sided by
obscure, closed-door trade agendas like the TPP and trade -in- services agreements?
Signing on to an empty framework like the MDG that does not have investment and trade
rules deprives us of a forum to seek redress for injustices.
Indigenous rights-holders and low-income economies need to ensure that there is a
mechanism in place to raise the rights of free prior and informed consent, to ensure that
the financial and legal means are made available for timely and reasonable due process.
We need an independent agency within the U.N. that can work for us to resolve disputes,
enforce settlements, and create binding regulatory rules that will hold corporations and
investors liable for unwarranted theft or damage to Indigenous cultural, intellectual, and
real properties.
The opportunity that the MDG presents should be less about streamlining aid, or for
integrating a transparent mainframe that will provide low-income economies with
infrastructure. The real opportunity for raising economic health and development is to
4
simply provide Indigenous communities and low- income countries open-access to the
same dispute settlement mechanisms that corporations use to bind States.
The combined nominal GDP for the Pacific Islands, which includes Papua New Guinea,
Pacific Small Island States, and the French and American Territories is about $37
billion—if we count Hawaii, West Papua and the Molukas, it’s about $105 billion. The
combined economies of the countries that Pacific Islands have been tethered to—
Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Chile, the U.S. and France—is almost $22 trillion,
yet our liquid continent, Oceania or Moana Nui, which accounts for a third of the surface
area of the planet—Our combined GDP accounts for less than one-half of 1%. If we
include the TPP countries, China, and the EU—we’re talking about one-fifth of 1%.viii
There is something so fundamentally wrong with the accepted measures of our economy.
How is it that we who are rich in resources, traditional knowledge, foods and medicines,
and have been integral to the biodiversity of our region are considered poor, while
countries that have professional managers who want to build infrastructure for our
communities in the Pacific are so rich?
The momentum behind this privatization policy is building like a tsunami, with the
potential for disaster when it reaches our shore. We here today are absolutely in the right
place to ensure that all peoples have the ability to participate in the negotiation of these
agreements, even if our governments agree to them without the consent of the governed,
the colonized.
In closing, the promise of the Millennium Development Goals has to be equitable,
involve traditional decision making, democratic processes, and assert normative
international recognition of free prior and informed consent, and provide access to
dispute resolution procedures at the highest courts.
***
i The TPP is currently a 28-trillion dollar, 12-nation partnership being negotiated by Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States
(South Korea on the sidelines waiting to get in).
5
ii “Japan to Join the Trans-Pacific Partnership—Finally!” March 18, 2013.
[http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/03/18-japan-joins-tr…]
the TPP covers 8.6 percent of global trade and almost 40 percent of global GDP.
iii http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-len…
iv “Continuing protests against the Hotel Hanga Roa” [http://saverapanui.org/?p=2071] April 17, 2012, On
April 16, 2012, the Hitorangi Clan again protested in front of the Hotel Hanga Roa for the recovery of
their ancestral lands. They did so in response to an international conference organized
by Anvisibleesoteric (www.anvisible.com) being held at the Hotel Hanga Roa built on the Hitorangi clan’s
land and sacred Ahu Makere (family altar) which had been unlawfully and violently taken. The Hitorangi
clan invoked their ancestors (matamúas) asking them to help them in their struggle to regain their land.
v Secret TPP treaty: Advanced Intellectual Property chapter for all 12 nations with negotiating positions,
(wikileaks release November 13, 2013). Article QQ.E.23 of the TPP draft text entitled: “Proposed joint text
for the Intellectual Property Chapter on Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions and
Genetic Resources” “Each Party (State) “exercises their sovereignty over their biological diversity and
resources and shall determine how to access them.”
(a) obtain prior informed consent to access genetic resources; (noting NO FREE, prior informed
consent)
The Parties affirm that they will promote quality patent examination of applications concerning genetic
resources and traditional knowledge to ensure that the eligibility criteria for patentability are satisfied.”
vi Bendini, Roberto, “WTO back on track after Bali.” European Parliament, Policy Department. DG
EXPO/B/PolDep/Note/2013_27.
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/briefing_note/join/2013/52…
SP(2013)522314_EN.pdf] 11 December 2013.
vii Godsoe, Harold. “The Depth of the Trade in Services Agreement”
[http://works.bepress.com/harold_godsoe/1] 2014. Despite being the first and only WTO trade agreement
on service trade, GATS contains no explicit definition of a ‘service’. Instead, services have been defined in
trade theory as either ‘not-goods’ (“a diverse group of economic activities distinct from manufacturing,
mining, and agriculture”) or simply by a list of industries or sectors. Yet the economic functioning of
services has the potential to be radically different than that of counterpart goods or even of counterpart
industrial sectors. Contrasted with goods, services are intangible; they add value to the client directly
(possibly, but not necessarily, by the transfer of rights to a good); they are simultaneously created and
consumed in a transaction (meaning they are also non-perishable, non-transferable, and non-storable);
they are co-produced by the provider and client; they are unable to be inspected before delivery and
therefore priced with more emphasis on client expectations and less on real utility, quality, cost of
production, or taxes; they able to be delivered in dynamic ways; and—most importantly for trade
agreements—they are able to generate (potentially unforeseeable) linkages by facilitating the production of
other commodities in an economy.
viii World Bank, 2012 Nominal GDP, or most recent data available. Hawaii 2012 GDP from State of
Hawaii.
UNITED NATIONS NEW YORK HEADQUATERS
MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
February 3-7- 2014
Rapa Nui Intervention
Iorana, your Excellencies, co chairs and fellow right-holders,
Presented by: Santi Hitorangi
I am advocating for Moana Nui a network of pacific wide rights-holders focusing on
justice issues concerning resources, trade, militarization and indigenous rights. In my
capacity as a member of the Hitorangi clan from Rapa Nui, I am here to put forward our
mana’u over the eight Millennium Development Goals addressing poverty and hunger,
universal education, gender equality, child mortality reduction, maternal health, access to
medicines, environmental sustainability and the global partnership for development.
These are all sectors of development that Rapa Nui has been denied, or have not
adequately been provided for by Chile. Otherwise known as Easter Island, Rapa Nui is
3,700 kilometers from the coast of Chile, and claimed as a territory in 1888 under
fraudulent circumstances. We are a nation struggling for self-determination, and seek to
be recognized by the UN to be placed on the list of Non Self Governing Territory for
decolonization.[i] We represent an indigenous struggle, a human rights struggle, and a
struggle to protect our traditional resources and ecological biodiversity throughout our
Pacific Island Communities.
Chile is one of the original signatories of the Trans Pacific Strategic Economic
Partnership, or the TPP, and they are negotiating in the largest free-trade agreement in the
world with 12 other countries.i Together these 12 countries represent nearly 28 trillion
dollars, about 40% of global GDP.ii
Rapa Nui is rich in natural capital. We have the land and resources to establish a
ssustainable economy while participating in the larger global economy. We have the
practical knowledge to make use of our natural capital and resources efficiently. We
Moana Nui have strong social decision making processes, rooted in our traditional
2
knowledge. For these reasons, Rapa Nui possesses the means to have a viable,
independent economy. Yet, we are not independent. It is also very difficult under the
current circumstances to establish our viability as an independent state because we do not
control the statistics by which GDP is calculated. Our economic indicators are subsumed
within those of other Chilean provinces in the Valpariaso region. And even if we did have
our own GDP, Rapa Nui would be classified as a “low-income economy” according to
World Bank economic indicators.iii
Against our consent, transnational corporations have been developing projects, that do
not benefit us, and that threaten our very existence, and the integrity of our land and
livelihoods.iv Rapa Nui is a world-renown tourist destination, and transnational
corporations continue to profit off our cultural resources while the nearest adequate
hospitals are in Santiago, hours away by plane. The TPP creates conditions for investors
to build ports, expand the already large airport, and privatize our land and resources using
Chilean military forces and kangaroo courts to protect their investments. The TPP and
other State- driven investment agreements continue to alienate us from our indigenous
lands by binding us to transnational corporations through agreements signed by the state
of Chile, and not by the Rapa Nui people who are the proper rights-holders.v
I would like to express our gravest concern that just as the TPP is an agenda for
privatization driven by corporations seeking to profit from our indigenous heritage and
properties, the MDG Global Partnership for Development is the doorman who greets
them, holds the door open and gives them the keys to our house.
This is not to say that every corporate intercourse with a developing nation is
exploitative, but history suggest that trade partnerships are not entered into for the
purpose of protecting indigenous rights, but for the purposes of guaranteeing access to
natural resources and markets. Low- income countries are signing the World Bank
Development Partnerships on the hope and belief that some benefit will come to them.
Instead, governments are opening the door for privatization of our natural resources
without our consent.
3
Last December, the WTO Bali meeting produced a declaration adopting new global trade
agendas: one of them is what is called a “services waiver” to least developed countries.vi
The services waiver will expand market access to developing countries benefiting
transnational corporations through service sectors like accounting, biotech, finance,
insurance, education, intellectual property, climate-related technologies, and information
and communication technologies.
As a small island that is seeking to be independent, we are not convinced that
privatization initiatives and investment agreements will provide the best options for our
food security, education, healthcare, environment and our indigenous resources. In
practice, Investor State agreements will take a low-income country to court for trying to
nationalize and protect our resources from the demands of the global market. Why should
building our infrastructure bind us to transnational corporate investment?vii
Another serious concern is that we do not have access to a court to dispute these kinds of
corporate investment rules. What access do low-income countries have to challenge
investment agreements in international courts if we are continually blind-sided by
obscure, closed-door trade agendas like the TPP and trade -in- services agreements?
Signing on to an empty framework like the MDG that does not have investment and trade
rules deprives us of a forum to seek redress for injustices.
Indigenous rights-holders and low-income economies need to ensure that there is a
mechanism in place to raise the rights of free prior and informed consent, to ensure that
the financial and legal means are made available for timely and reasonable due process.
We need an independent agency within the U.N. that can work for us to resolve disputes,
enforce settlements, and create binding regulatory rules that will hold corporations and
investors liable for unwarranted theft or damage to Indigenous cultural, intellectual, and
real properties.
The opportunity that the MDG presents should be less about streamlining aid, or for
integrating a transparent mainframe that will provide low-income economies with
infrastructure. The real opportunity for raising economic health and development is to
4
simply provide Indigenous communities and low- income countries open-access to the
same dispute settlement mechanisms that corporations use to bind States.
The combined nominal GDP for the Pacific Islands, which includes Papua New Guinea,
Pacific Small Island States, and the French and American Territories is about $37
billion—if we count Hawaii, West Papua and the Molukas, it’s about $105 billion. The
combined economies of the countries that Pacific Islands have been tethered to—
Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Chile, the U.S. and France—is almost $22 trillion,
yet our liquid continent, Oceania or Moana Nui, which accounts for a third of the surface
area of the planet—Our combined GDP accounts for less than one-half of 1%. If we
include the TPP countries, China, and the EU—we’re talking about one-fifth of 1%.viii
There is something so fundamentally wrong with the accepted measures of our economy.
How is it that we who are rich in resources, traditional knowledge, foods and medicines,
and have been integral to the biodiversity of our region are considered poor, while
countries that have professional managers who want to build infrastructure for our
communities in the Pacific are so rich?
The momentum behind this privatization policy is building like a tsunami, with the
potential for disaster when it reaches our shore. We here today are absolutely in the right
place to ensure that all peoples have the ability to participate in the negotiation of these
agreements, even if our governments agree to them without the consent of the governed,
the colonized.
In closing, the promise of the Millennium Development Goals has to be equitable,
involve traditional decision making, democratic processes, and assert normative
international recognition of free prior and informed consent, and provide access to
dispute resolution procedures at the highest courts.
***
i The TPP is currently a 28-trillion dollar, 12-nation partnership being negotiated by Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States
(South Korea on the sidelines waiting to get in).
5
ii “Japan to Join the Trans-Pacific Partnership—Finally!” March 18, 2013.
[http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/03/18-japan-joins-tr…]
the TPP covers 8.6 percent of global trade and almost 40 percent of global GDP.
iii http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-len…
iv “Continuing protests against the Hotel Hanga Roa” [http://saverapanui.org/?p=2071] April 17, 2012, On
April 16, 2012, the Hitorangi Clan again protested in front of the Hotel Hanga Roa for the recovery of
their ancestral lands. They did so in response to an international conference organized
by Anvisibleesoteric (www.anvisible.com) being held at the Hotel Hanga Roa built on the Hitorangi clan’s
land and sacred Ahu Makere (family altar) which had been unlawfully and violently taken. The Hitorangi
clan invoked their ancestors (matamúas) asking them to help them in their struggle to regain their land.
v Secret TPP treaty: Advanced Intellectual Property chapter for all 12 nations with negotiating positions,
(wikileaks release November 13, 2013). Article QQ.E.23 of the TPP draft text entitled: “Proposed joint text
for the Intellectual Property Chapter on Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions and
Genetic Resources” “Each Party (State) “exercises their sovereignty over their biological diversity and
resources and shall determine how to access them.”
(a) obtain prior informed consent to access genetic resources; (noting NO FREE, prior informed
consent)
The Parties affirm that they will promote quality patent examination of applications concerning genetic
resources and traditional knowledge to ensure that the eligibility criteria for patentability are satisfied.”
vi Bendini, Roberto, “WTO back on track after Bali.” European Parliament, Policy Department. DG
EXPO/B/PolDep/Note/2013_27.
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/briefing_note/join/2013/52…
SP(2013)522314_EN.pdf] 11 December 2013.
vii Godsoe, Harold. “The Depth of the Trade in Services Agreement”
[http://works.bepress.com/harold_godsoe/1] 2014. Despite being the first and only WTO trade agreement
on service trade, GATS contains no explicit definition of a ‘service’. Instead, services have been defined in
trade theory as either ‘not-goods’ (“a diverse group of economic activities distinct from manufacturing,
mining, and agriculture”) or simply by a list of industries or sectors. Yet the economic functioning of
services has the potential to be radically different than that of counterpart goods or even of counterpart
industrial sectors. Contrasted with goods, services are intangible; they add value to the client directly
(possibly, but not necessarily, by the transfer of rights to a good); they are simultaneously created and
consumed in a transaction (meaning they are also non-perishable, non-transferable, and non-storable);
they are co-produced by the provider and client; they are unable to be inspected before delivery and
therefore priced with more emphasis on client expectations and less on real utility, quality, cost of
production, or taxes; they able to be delivered in dynamic ways; and—most importantly for trade
agreements—they are able to generate (potentially unforeseeable) linkages by facilitating the production of
other commodities in an economy.
viii World Bank, 2012 Nominal GDP, or most recent data available. Hawaii 2012 GDP from State of
Hawaii.