A/HRC/44/40/Add.1 averages: 31.16 per cent for the Orang Asli in 2010,81 22.8 per cent in Sabah and 6.4 per cent in Sarawak in 2009.82 53. Despite laudable political and legal commitments to promote the rights of indigenous peoples, their rights, ways of life and goals were frequently misunderstood or dismissed by government officials with whom the Special Rapporteur met. In responding to the Special Rapporteur’s draft report, the Government illustrated this complete failure by stating that “most of [the] indigenous community still resist to change their mind set and way of life due to having strong belief on maintaining their ancient traditions”. That would suggest that the Government’s longstanding rhetorical commitments are meaningless in practice. 54. Land rights are especially important for indigenous peoples and many described their indispensable relationship with the land, and how their cultivation methods, diet, shelter and traditional health-care practices derived from and depended on access to land. These communities have for years raised concerns about the negative impacts that loss of land to commercial plantations and logging have on their health, well-being, housing and food security. 83 However, States continue to find devious ways to deprive indigenous communities of the land they have traditionally relied upon, for example by disingenuously declaring their land a “forest reserve”, while allowing corporate actors to exploit the area. One person said, “We never said we were facing extreme poverty. The Government is saying that and using it to justify projects that do not benefit us.” A civil servant in Sarawak tellingly claimed that indigenous people do not actually “use” the land, they merely “roam around”. Like her, many policymakers seem to assume a hierarchy of potential land uses that ranks corporate extraction of profit above sustainable cultivation by indigenous peoples. In the face of powerful evidence to the contrary, the Government asserted that “commercial plantations and logging are not threatening or diminishing, either directly or indirectly, the resources or tenure right of the communities”. 55. Indigenous people also reported that they were often excluded from social services including school and health care. Some said they had dropped out of school because the instruction was not relevant or accessible to them, because of what they saw as attempted religious conversion or because they experienced corporal punishment and discrimination. By contrast, no government official could produce an assessment of educational outcomes for indigenous peoples. One Kelantan State official explained that Orang Asli could never be expected to achieve the same educational outcomes as people in cities. 56. Some indigenous women described an appallingly authoritarian approach by health authorities to indigenous peoples. They said they were required to accept unwanted contraceptive injections or implants to which they had not freely consented. One woman described begging doctors to remove an unwanted and painful implant that prevented her from carrying out daily tasks and said the removal had cost her the equivalent of a month’s worth of household expenses. 57. The Government should follow through on its promises to indigenous peoples. It should evaluate existing law, practices and institutions to ensure that policies are developed in line with the principles contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.84 Given that many issues relating to land have been devolved to the state level, the federal Government must find ways to work with State authorities to ensure recognition of the customary land rights of indigenous peoples, including through public and participatory mapping of indigenous land claims, and build on existing efforts to hold 81 82 83 84 12 Figure provided by the Malaysian authorities, 19 August 2019. Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister’s Department, Tenth Malaysian Plan, 2011–2015 (2010), p. 162. See, for example, Amnesty International, “The forest is our heartbeat: the struggle to defend indigenous land in Malaysia” (2018); National Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, Report of the National Inquiry into the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples (April 2013). See, for example, Bar Council Malaysia and Pusat Komas, submission of joint memorandum on reform of Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954 and Orang Asli policy and administration to the Minister in charge of National Unity and Social Wellbeing (27 June 2019).