Finnish lawmakers approved on Thursday, June 19th a long-awaited legal reform of the Sami parliament that strengthens the rights of Europe’s only recognised native people to decide how they are governed.
The new law clarifies the Finnish authorities’ duty to consult the Sami on matters that concern them.
The acting speaker of the Sami parliament told AFP the bill—which had stalled under three previous governments—included important elements which “strengthen the Sami people’s powers to decide how they are governed.”
“For more than 14 years now, we have had to fight to have a free voice,” Tuomas Aslak Juuso said.
Some 10,500 indigenous Sami live in Finland, speaking three different Sami languages.
Under the Finnish constitution, they have the right to keep their own languages and culture.
And in their homeland in Finnish Lapland, called Sapmi, they have the power to take political decisions on such matters.
Their main decision-making body is the Sami parliament, which is based in the Arctic town of Inari and holds elections every four years for its 21 seats.
United Nations human rights bodies criticised Finland several times over the Sami Parliament Act.
They said the Act breached Finland’s human rights obligations because it allowed people who the Sami parliament did not deem eligible to be included on the electoral roll.
The new Act bases a person’s eligibility to vote or stand in Sami parliamentary elections on language.
This means they must have one of the Sami languages as their mother tongue, or have at least one parent, grandparent or great-grandparent who did so.
