Indigenous Peoples right to data, including data collection and Disaggregation – item 3 Draft study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 18th session of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Statement Norway
Chairperson,
We thank the panellists for their interventions.
The Draft study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples raise many challenging and important issues, such as the legitimate desire of Indigenous Peoples to access data about their own communities. A key challenge is data protection, as a result of self-identification and voluntary self-reporting. Allow me to share some experiences and practices on data collection and disaggregation in Norway.
It is a strong and widely supported principle in Norway that individuals should not be registered by the state unless it is clearly necessary and for a legitimate cause. My country has a longstanding official policy of not recording citizens' race and ethnicity, rooted in historical misuse of such registration. Since much of personal statistics are register-based, there is no general data foundation for creating individual-based statistics on people with Sami ethnic affiliation in Norway. We do, however, have relevant knowledge regarding the Sami.
One example: Statistics Norway produces official statistics on the Sami every two or three years. Statistics Norway has chosen not to advocate for self-reporting and expanded use of existing registers, believing that it should emerge as a desire and initiative from the Sami communities themselves.
A second: In Norway, The National Population Register produces statistics on the number of people using Sami languages, based on people who have registered as users of one or more Sami languages. Relying on voluntary registering of language proficiency, or ethnic status, risks bias in data and the validity of the resulting analyses.
This situation makes sociological research and public health studies, such as SAMINOR more important. SAMINOR is a large population-based health and living conditions survey. It is one of the most important sources of knowledge about the health and living conditions of the Sami and northern Norwegian populations.
Together, the Sami Parliament and the government have appointed the Expert Analysis Group for Sami Statistics, who publishes an annual report featuring annotated Sami statistics. The report contributes to increased knowledge on Sami language, culture and society that can be used by the government and the Sami Parliament in Sami policy work in Norway.
Open data is another important policy-principle, which must be balanced with the value of indigenous control. This is an open debate among Sami and other indigenous academics, and we welcome the dialogue on this matter.
Thank you.