Decision of the UN Human Rights Committee concerning logging in reindeer husbandry areas

Press release 130/2005
19 April, 2005

In its decision handed down in March, the UN Human Rights Committee has concluded that the right to exercise indigenous culture, specified in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has not been violated when the National Forest & Park Service has felled timber in the Pyhäjärvi, Kirkko-Outa and Paadarskaidi areas in 1998 and when planning the felling of timber in the Kippalrova area, where the complaint lodgers engage in reindeer husbandry.

The Committee made extensive use of studies investigating the long-term consequences of logging to reindeer husbandry and therein to exercising indigenous culture. The Committee also became acquainted with factors influencing the low economic profitability of reindeer husbandry. In its decision the Committee states that the number of reindeer is relatively large in spite of low economic profitability and other problems. The Committee therefore deemed that the effects of the logging carried out have not been shown to be so serious as to have violated against the complaint lodgers’ rights, protected under Article 27, to exercise their own culture together with other members of their group.

Already in 1996, the Human Rights Committee handed down a decision that concerned logging that had taken place partly in the same areas of Pyhäjärvi and Kirkko-Outa. In that decision as well, the Committee concluded that the rights specified in Article 27 had not been violated.

Additional information: Camilla Busck-Nielsen, Senior Officer, Legislative Affairs, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, tel. + 358 9 1605 5727.