Indigenous youth affirmed their roles as vanguards of the environment during the campaign launching of the Passing the Torch: Land Rights Now for Indigenous Youth last August 31, 2022. The launch was also part of the culminating activity for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2022.
The main objective of “Passing the torch: Land Rights Now for Indigenous Youth” is to strengthen and shape the Land Rights Now campaign with more significant involvement of indigenous youth. The project adopts the combined campaigns of Asia Young Indigenous Peoples Network (AYIPN), International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), and the global campaign for Land Rights Now. The three combined campaigns are the Indigenous Lands in Indigenous Hands (ILIH), #Fight4OurRights and the Land Rights Now.
IPMSDL’s #Fight4OurFuture campaign puts the IP right to self-determination at the forefront of the global discourse on post-pandemic rebuilding. While the world’s powerful actors are devising plans of “recovery” while ensuring the preservation of the status quo, the Indigenous Peoples are fighting for a self-determined future for a sustainable, healthy, free, and just world. The campaign has four major themes, namely: Land (Fight4OurLand), Environment (Fight4OurPlanet), Health (Fight4OurHealth) and Human Rights (Fight4OurRights).
AYIPN’s Indigenous Lands in Indigenous Hands (ILIH) is an Indigenous youth-led campaign to assert the rights of Indigenous peoples, affirm their role as IP leaders and rights defenders, and advance the struggle for self-determination and land rights.
During the online launch, indigenous youth organizations from Cambodia, Malaysia, India and Philippines presented their activities of youth leadership trainings, women’s rights workshops, research workshop and capacity building activities that will harness the skills of indigenous youth and eventually be part of the awareness raising of land rights issues and actions. They reiterated their role as stewards and future leaders in the protection of natural resources.
