by way of sourcing and distributing relevant human rights pamphlets and
materials.
Another key achievement of the ATHAM came about in 2013 when the MOE
agreed to set up the Ministry’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Committee as an offshoot to the ATHAM. SUHAKAM is a permanent member to
the Committee that is chaired by the MOE’s Director General. Through this
Committee, the MOE had agreed to an additional 151 schools, inclusive of 30
additional Orang Asli schools, to be included for the ATHAM Project. The
Committee conducts workshops and meets twice annually to, among others,
review students’ activities in order to perpetuate human rights practices and
culture, including those that relate to the Orang Asli.
(b)
National Inquiry into the Land Right of Indigenous Peoples 116
Since its establishment, SUHAKAM received numerous complaints and
memoranda from the IP who alleged that their native customary right to land have
been violated by various actors including the Government and private land
concessionaires. In particular, they claimed of encroachment and/or dispossession
of native land to plantation and/or commercial land development, gazetting of
native land into forest or park reserves, overlapping community claims over native
land, and delay in the part of the Government in processing the IPs’ application for
land titles over their native territories. Literature review on the issue also revealed
that the deprivation of native customary right to land had also led to the IP’s
further marginalisation.
Realising that the overwhelming and systemic native land issues in Malaysia
cannot be effectively dealt with by way of piecemeal approaches, in 2011,
SUHAKAM decided to conduct its maiden national inquiry (NI) to address the
land right of the IP in Malaysia.
116
SUHAKAM (n 9)
37