The Crimean Tatar Resource Center sent a report to the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the topic Crimea: Urbanization and Indigenous Peoples. This material will be used for the report of the Special Rapporteur on the topic The situation with indigenous peoples living in urban areas, which will be presented at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.
The report emphasizes that since the beginning of the occupation, the Russian Federation has been implementing a policy of the so-called active colonization of the Crimean peninsula, the homeland of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. Due to this policy, the population of Crimea over the past seven years has increased from 2.5 million to about 3.2 million people. At the same time, about 30 thousand representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, due to repressions, were forced to leave Crimea.
“The purposeful policy of resettlement of about 700 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation has increased the population's demand for water, creating an unjustified anthropogenic load in areas with limited local sources, primarily on the cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol”,- the text said.
The authors of the report noted that the ill-considered policy of urbanization, as well as the illegal resettlement of Russian citizens to Crimea, has devastating consequences for the Crimean Peninsula, the homeland of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. It also limits the ability of Crimean Tatars to actively participate in the urbanization of the peninsula, violating the collective rights of the indigenous people of Crimea, enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
