Pavel Sulyandziga


Pavel Vasilievich Sulyandziga is a Russian indigenous rights activist of Udege nationality. He is a member of the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, tasked with the dissemination of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and 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 and member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Sulyandziga's home region is the Bikin River valley, located in close proximity to the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve, which was designated UNESCO World Heritage in 2001. The Bikin valley is covered with dense forest and constitutes an important habitat for the Amur tiger. 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.