This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
During Guatemala’s 36-year Civil War, around 200,000 people were killed, hundreds of villages were destroyed, and over 100,000 women were raped.
Indigenous Maya people experienced these crimes at disproportionate rates, and both the United Nations and the country’s truth commission found state forces responsible for acts of genocide against them.
The conflict ended in 1996, but nearly three decades after the peace accords were signed, Mayan Indigenous leader Mario Simón Chávez says the violence has not truly ended.
“Fortunately, Guatemala is no longer experiencing an armed conflict. However, the Internal Armed Conflict has left indelible scars on our people,” he said.
Chávez said Indigenous communities continue to experience structural forms of conflict through corruption, dispossession of Indigenous lands, and attacks on Indigenous governance. “For our peoples, peace is only possible when our collective rights, our right to self-determination, and our ancestral relationship with our territories are fully respected.”
From Guatemala and Kanaky (New Caledonia) to West Papua and Aotearoa, Indigenous communities are confronting the long-term impacts of conflict, including displacement, militarisation, and political instability.
This week, Indigenous delegates have brought these ongoing challenges to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP). For many, colonisation and its lingering effects represent an ongoing state of imposed conflict.
In opening remarks at the start of the week, Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro, President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, highlighted the importance of the discussion. “In too many parts of the world, Indigenous peoples bear the heaviest cost of conflicts they did not choose,” he said.
According to a draft study, which was prepared by EMRIP and informed by more than 80 submissions from Indigenous peoples, states, human rights institutions, civil society and academics, conflict affecting Indigenous peoples must be understood beyond armed violence. It includes militarisation, occupation, forced displacement and structural violence linked to colonisation, resource extraction and political repression. The study also recognises that “post-conflict” does not necessarily mean peace, with Indigenous rights often remaining at risk during reconstruction, peacebuilding and transitional justice periods.
During Monday’s discussion of the study, speaker after speaker praised the study for broadening the definition of conflict to more accurately reflect the challenges facing Indigenous peoples.
Across the world, the experiences shared by Indigenous delegates at EMRIP reflect many of the study’s central findings: that conflict is often rooted in unresolved questions of land, self-determination, governance and inequality, and that peace processes cannot succeed without Indigenous peoples’ meaningful participation.
Chairing the session, EMRIP expert Ojot Miru Ojulu said the study captured both the ongoing impacts of conflict on Indigenous peoples and the knowledge, systems and practices they bring to peacebuilding.
“The study demonstrates that conflict affects virtually every dimension of Indigenous peoples’ lives. It threatens the right to live, liberty and security,” Ojulu said. “Across every region, Indigenous peoples possess longstanding traditions of diplomacy, mediation, customary law, and peacebuilding.”
“The United Nations’ understanding of conflict has evolved beyond armed conflict and periods of overt violence to recognise a multidimensional framework that addresses root causes, structural vulnerabilities and emerging systemic conflicts,” said Waikato University law lecturer Maryann Stancich (Te Parawhau, Ngāti Manu, Te Popoto, Ngāpuhi), who said Indigenous perspectives show there is still room to deepen how conflict is understood.
Through its advice to the Human Rights Council, EMRIP aims for the study to strengthen international guidance on protecting Indigenous rights before, during and after conflict, while recognising Indigenous peoples not only as communities affected by conflict, but as right holders and key actors in conflict prevention, reconciliation and sustainable peacebuilding.
‘Peace is not simply defined by the absence of war’
Stancich said this understanding is important for recognising how colonial systems can continue to affect Indigenous peoples even without physical violence.
“In Aotearoa, settler colonialism is not a historical event we have moved past,” she said.
“Many of the impacts of colonisation continue today through laws, policies and governance arrangements that affect [Indigenous] self-determination, participation and authority over our own affairs.”
She said recognising Indigenous legal systems is also essential to peacebuilding, with tikanga Māori and other Indigenous legal traditions providing frameworks for resolving disputes, repairing harm and restoring relationships.
Rather than replacing state systems, she said Indigenous legal traditions should be recognised as legitimate systems of law that can operate alongside others to strengthen communities and resolve conflict in culturally meaningful ways.
“Peace is not simply defined by the absence of war,” Stancich said. “Lasting peace also requires justice and the meaningful implementation of the minimum standards affirmed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
The Pacific cannot have peace without decolonisation
In 2024, the French government proposed electoral changes to Kanaky (New Caledonia)’s electoral system that Indigenous Kanak groups feared would dilute their political representation. Kanaky (New Caledonia) is a territory of France, and the Kanak independence movement has been fighting for decades. In response, unrest erupted across Kanaky (New Caledonia), leaving 14 people dead, most of them Kanak, and an estimated €2.2 billion in damage.
Roselyne Makalu, who is from Lifou Island and a member of the Pacific Women Mediators Network, said that women played a critical role in de-escalating tensions during the unrest, using culture, dialogue and healing to prevent further harm. “Children have anger in their bodies, and they don’t know why or where it comes from, but they feel excluded here in their own country,” Makalu said.
She said that although the immediate unrest has eased, Kanaky remains in a period of political and social tension, with the deeper trauma of colonisation often missing from international discussions.
Viro Xulue, Human Rights and Indigenous Advisor to the Customary Council of Drehu in Kanaky, said the territory’s experience demonstrates why peace cannot be separated from decolonisation.
According to both United Nations human rights mechanisms and France’s own National Human Rights Consultative Commission, New Caledonia’s decolonisation process remains unfinished, with unresolved questions around political status, self-determination, Indigenous representation, land rights and the full recognition of Kanak rights continuing to shape tensions.
Xulue said the struggle for self-determination is part of a wider Pacific movement among Indigenous peoples, with Māohi Nui, Guam, Tokelau and American Samoa also among the territories on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories seeking decolonisation. “The Pacific Blue, peace of the Pacific, cannot happen when it isn’t totally decolonised,” Xulue said.
His comments come as Pacific leaders continue to promote the Blue Pacific vision of an “Ocean of Peace”, even as military partnerships such as AUKUS and large-scale exercises, including RIMPAC, Valiant Shield and Talisman Sabre, signal growing geopolitical competition across the region.
Although Indigenous delegates stressed the importance of a broader definition of conflict, Xulue and others also highlighted areas of more active violence.
In a statement delivered to EMRIP on Monday, Xulue spoke about West Papua, where Indigenous communities have long raised concerns over militarisation, resource extraction and the impacts of large-scale development - including the world’s largest deforestation project - on their lands. He called on EMRIP to remind states of their obligations to uphold Indigenous peoples’ rights.
“Peace,” Xulue said, “Is inseparable from self-determination.”
