Thirty-three members of the Muddusjärvi Reindeer Herders’ Cooperative (MPLK), an indigenous Sámi community in northern Finland, have brought a landmark complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). Toby Fisher is instructed by Hogan Lovells as lead counsel for MPLK, alongside co-counsel Professor Martin Scheinin.
The complaint draws on the UN Human Rights Committee’s groundbreaking 2022 decision in Billy et al. v. Australia and sets out how dispossession of indigenous Sámi land, climate change and decades of intensive logging by the Finnish State’s forestry agency have severely damaged the environment on which MPLK nature-based reindeer herding depends.
In that context, the complaint alleges violations of ICCPR Articles 27 (right to enjoy one’s culture), 17 (privacy and family life), 26 (non-discrimination), and 1 (self-determination), arising from the State’s failure to support Sámi herding communities during recent winters. The complaint challenges the Finnish Government’s decision not to release appropriate compensation to the MPLK community in 2019–2020 and 2021–2022, despite laws providing for economic support in the event of reindeer losses. Had adequate financial support been provided to the MPLK members, they would have been able to mitigate some of the negative impacts of climate change and forestry on their reindeer herds.
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(All photos by Kevin Francett)