President Näkkäläjärvi at the UN: Sámi Parliament Act proposal must be approved urgently – “No more excuses”
The Sámi Parliament in Finland participates in the 17th session of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) in Geneva on 8–12 July, 2024. In her speech, the President of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, appealed to the Finnish Parliament to approve the Sámi Parliament Act bill as a matter of urgency.
Violations of Indigenous self-determination are not a credit to Finland, said the President of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, in her speech at the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) in Geneva. Photo: The Sámi Parliament in Finland / Inka-Saara Arttijeff.
Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, the President of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, had both bad and good news to tell the UN’s Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP). In the spring of 2024, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland ordered a repeat Sámi Parliament election and entered 65 people in the electoral roll of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, even though the persons do not meet the criteria for the right to vote according to the decisions of Sámi Parliament bodies.
– We, all seven members of the Executive Board, have filed a human rights complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee about the decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court. The Human Rights Committee, on the other hand, has asked the state of Finland to refrain from any retaliation measures in the electoral roll matter. This is significant because retaliation is a prohibited form of discrimination, President Näkkäläjärvi said.
President Näkkäläjärvi had good news to share about the repeat Sámi Parliament election that ended last week.
– We Sámi won our own election! A significant majority of the new Sámi Parliament supports the approval of the Sámi Parliament Act proposal. We urge the Finnish Parliament to approve the law proposal that was negotiated with us, the Sámi Parliament in Finland, and brought into the Finnish Parliament as a unanimous government bill. There are no more excuses, President Näkkäläjärvi emphasised.
In December 2023, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s (National Coalition Party) government unanimously submitted the Sámi Parliament Act bill to the Finnish Parliament. In February 2024, the Constitutional Law Committee postponed the consideration of the bill over the repeat Sámi Parliament election.
The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples meets annually in Geneva
The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) is a subsidiary body of the UN Human Rights Council. Its annual sessions in Geneva are attended, among others, by representatives of states, Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous organizations. The mechanism assists UN member states in achieving the goals of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
More information:
Pirita Näkkäläjärvi
President
00 358 44 753 3766
pirita.nakkalajarvi@samediggi.fi
