In a session of the UN Forum on Minority Issues convened by the World Uyghur Congress, with the participation of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization and Minority Rights Group, Mercè Monje Cano, Secretary-General of UNPO, reflected on the lessons learned from working with over forty unrepresented peoples and how their struggles contribute to building resilient societies.
These insights offer a foundation to examine how UNPO’s engagement with unrepresented peoples illustrates the persistence of identity and governance in the face of repression. UNPO’s experience demonstrates how excluded communities develop strategies of resilience and collective action that provide valuable lessons for inclusion and long-term stability.
The Secretary-General’s intervention highlights the importance of recognizing unrepresented peoples as key stakeholders in building stable and sustainable societies. Recognizing their rights enables policymakers and societies to make decisions that are fairer, more representative and better able to address the needs of all communities. Furthermore, integrating the experiences and practices of these communities into broader societal frameworks provides practical insights into resilience and non-violent conflict resolution. In this way the struggles and contributions of unrepresented peoples become essential not only for their own survival but for the long-term stability of societies as a whole.
Dear friends,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My reflections come from my work as Secretary General of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) which brings together more than 40 Peoples and Nations: Indigenous peoples, minorities, occupied territories, de facto states, and stateless nations. These communities differ widely in culture and geography, yet all face the same structural reality: exclusion from political life, denial of their right to decide their future, and the absence of meaningful protection for both their individual and collective rights.
UNPO was founded by leaders from Estonia, Tibet, and the Uyghur people facing communist oppression yet committed to nonviolence, dignity, and interethnic tolerance in the late 1980s . In 1991 UNPO was formally established in The Hague.
For more than 35 years, we have witnessed how resilient communities find ways to survive, adapt, and protect their identities despite systematic persecution and silencing, including by some states represented here at the Forum on Minority Issues. And yet, generation after generation, our members, leaders and communities, continue to rise, to organise, and to insist on dignity with extraordinary courage.
Working with unrepresented peoples, I learn daily. Their struggles are not only about confronting injustice, they contain knowledge the world urgently needs. Despite repression, these communities have preserved their languages, cultural heritage, and governance traditions. They have survived political exclusion through cohesion, collective memory, and shared identity.
This resilience is not anecdotal. It is precisely the kind of resilience the world needs today, in a moment of ecological crisis, democratic backsliding, and geopolitical fragmentation.
Preparing for this conference, a friend yesterday asked me what is understood by a “resilient society” . According to the internet (and it seems to be a general agreement between Cambridge English dictionary and chatgpt): A resilient society is generally defined as a community or social system that has the capacity to absorb shocks, adapt to change, and continue functioning—and even transform positively—when confronted with crises.
And working day by day besides unrepresented communities resisting oppression, it is fascinating to hear testimony of how their knowledge systems offer concrete solutions to build resilient societies: they have environmental stewardship, community-centred governance, intergenerational responsibility, and non-violent conflict resolution expertise. These are the essential tools of societies capable of withstanding shocks—not just for unrepresented peoples, but for everyone.
We see this resilience also in the diaspora. The Uyghur community, for instance, faces one of the most sophisticated systems of surveillance and cultural erasure in the world. Yet their diaspora preserves identity through archives, cultural centres, education, and global advocacy.
However, every time communities take a step forward, repressive states—from China to Pakistan, Iran, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and others—increase surveillance, intimidation, and propaganda, including across borders. Transnational repression is not only an attack on these communities; it threatens everyone. It endangers citizens in third countries, erodes rule of law, and ultimately undermines the credibility of states that engage in it. It will not produce silence—only long-term backlash.
Our global system was designed on the assumption that states protect their populations. But today, with authoritarianism rising and civic spaces shrinking, many UNPO members face new forms of exclusion: digital surveillance, forced assimilation, identity erasure, and intimidation abroad. Excluding peoples from policymaking and peace processes does not solve grievances—it deepens them. When the right to self-determination is denied, conflicts persist, social fractures widen, cultural survival weakens, and trust collapses. No society can call itself resilient when entire peoples are excluded from shaping their future.
But the opposite is equally true. When unrepresented peoples—Indigenous nations, minorities, stateless communities and their diasporas —are recognised as meaningful stakeholders, societies become stronger. Inclusion brings legitimacy, long-term stability, social cohesion, environmental protection, and democratic renewal. Self-determination is not a threat to states; it is a stabilising force and an engine of resilience.
In today’s geopolitical moment—marked by authoritarian resurgence, diminishing multilateralism, and concentrated wealth and power—we urgently need to learn from communities that have kept alive the highest values of dignity, justice, and peaceful resistance. They protect their land, their language, and their culture—not only for themselves, but for all of us. Their courage should inspire ours.
And we must recognise that exclusion is no longer something affecting “others.” Increasingly, it affects the majority. Inequality deepens, trust erodes, and the social contract weakens. We see the consequences in the rise of far-right movements, polarisation, and democratic decay. Concentrating power may benefit a few in the short term, but it is unsustainable in the long term—for anyone.
Self-determination lifts societies out of fragility. Former UNPO members—from Estonia to Timor-Leste—remind us that when peoples are heard and recognised, peace and democracy take root. Across 35 years, we have seen the same truth: excluding peoples weakens societies; including them strengthens them.
Dear colleagues, today is a turning point in history. We are living through a global realignment. In such moments, each of us must choose where we stand—for ourselves, for our communities, and for the next generations. Fear and confusion are exactly what oppressive actors want. But instead of surrendering to chaos, we must keep a clear mind. We must look oppression in the eye, think creatively, join strengths, learn from each other, and dare to imagine new systems rooted in justice, solidarity, and dignity.
This is not only a political choice—it is a moral responsibility.
So to conclude, what I have learned working side by side with unrepresented peoples is that if we want stable, inclusive, democratic, and resilient societies, we must begin by listening to those who have been excluded the most. Their history of survival, cohesion, and non-violent resistance holds lessons for all of us as we navigate the uncertainties of this century.
Thank you.
