Swedes, Finns slam door on Sámi rights, reject ILO Convention on Indigenous peoples

YLE News reports that Finland and Sweden steadfastly refuse to ratify the nearly 22-year-old ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, aka Convention 169, “the only [European Union] countries yet to do so.”

The Scandinavian holdouts are embroiled in land disputes with their respective Sámi populations. If you’d like to learn more, Minority Rights Group International has published summaries of these struggles in Finland and in Sweden. (Norway, meanwhile, ratified the Convention way back in 1990, an interesting contrast when you consider it has the region’s largest Sámi population by far.)