RUSSIA

Pavel Sulyandziga (Russian: Павел Васильевич Суляндзига) is Russian indigenous peoples rights activist of Udege nationality.

He was a teacher of mathematics at the Math and Physics Department of the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute in Khabarovsk City and a Legislative Faculty at the University of Marx-Lenin in Vladivostok City. With a PhD in Economic Science, he also served as Honorary Professor and UNESCO Faculty at the Novosibirsk State University in Russia. He served as Associate Researcher at the Bowdoin College in Maine, USA.

He was a member of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights, tasked with the promotion of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. He was a former member of the Public Chamber of Russia.

Until 2010, he was the first vice-president of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), and member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He is now the president of the International Indigenous Fund for Development and Solidarity (“Batani”) based in Maine, USA.

During the late 1980s, Pavel Sulyandziga lived in the village of Krasny Yar, where he was successful in mobilizing the population against the administration’s plans to grant timber harvesting licenses to a Soviet-Korean joint venture led by Hyundai. Since then, he has remained one of the most outspoken indigenous rights activists in the Russian Federation.