Mother Earth Journal

The first UN ‘State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples’ report, a collaborative effort organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues reveals startling statistics of how indigenous peoples are faring in areas such as poverty, health, education, employment, human rights, the environment and more. The Chapters were written by independent experts.

Over 370 million indigenous people live in some 90 countries in all regions of the world. Indigenous peoples make major contributions to humanity’s cultural diversity, with more than two thirds of its languages and an extrordinary amount of its traditional knowledge.

Their situation in many parts of the world is critical today. Poverty rates are significantly higher compared to other groups. They constitute five per cent of the world’s population, but they are 15 per cent of the world’s poor. Most indicators of well-being show that indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately compared to non-indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples face systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic power. They are over-represented among the poorest, the illiterate, the destitute. They are displaced by wars and environmental disasters, often dispossessed of their ancestral lands and deprived of their resources for survival, both physical and cultural, even robbed of their very right to life.

In more modern versions of market exploitation, indigenous peoples see their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions marketed and patented without their consent or participation.

Of the some 7,000 languages today, it is estimated that more than 4,000 are spoken by indigenous peoples. Language specialists predict that up to 90 per cent of the world’s languages are likely to become extinct or threatened with extinction by the end of the century.

There is some cause for optimism, the report says. The international community increasingly recognizes indigenous peoples’ human rights, most prominently evidenced by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples themselves continue to organize for the promotion of their rights. They are the stewards of some of the world’s most biologically diverse areas and their traditional knowledge about the biodibversity of these areas is invaluable. As the effects of climate change are becoming clearer, it is increasingly evident that indigenous peoples must play a central role in developing adaptation and mitigation efforts to this global challenge.

Alarming state of indigenous health

The publication’s statistics illustrate the gravity of the situation in both developed and developing countries. Poor nutrition, limited access to care, lack of resources crucial to maintaining health and well-being and contamination of natural resources are all contributing factors to the terrible state of indigenous health worldwide.

Indigenous peoples’ life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than their non-indigenous counterparts.

In the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

Suicide rates of indigenous peoples, particularly among youth, are considerably higher in many countries, for example, up to 11 times the national average for the Inuit in Canada.

In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11.

In parts of Ecuador, indigenous people have 30 times greater risk of throat cancer than the national average.

Indigenous peoples experience disproportionately high levels of maternal and infant mortality, malnutrition, cardiovascular illnesses, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

And worldwide, more than 50 per cent of indigenous adults suffer from Type 2 diabetes – a number predicted to rise.

Displacement and dispossession destroying indigenous communities

While indigenous peoples make up around 370 million of the world’s population they constitute one-third of the world’s 900 million extremely poor rural people.

One of the most significant threats facing indigenous peoples identified in the publication is the displacement of indigenous peoples from their lands, territories and resources. The publication details several examples of displacement, separation and eviction, including in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hawaii, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Colombia.

“When indigenous peoples have reacted and tried to assert their rights, they have suffered physical abuse, imprisonment, torture and even death,” states the publication.

Every day, indigenous communities all over the world face issues of violence and brutality, continuing assimilation policies, dispossession of land, marginalization, forced removal or relocation, denial of land rights, impacts of large-scale development, abuses by military forces and a host of other abuses.

Here’s the UN press release:

The United Nations today launched its first report on the state of the world’s indigenous people, with the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, saying it offered a “daring and bold” description of the situation of indigenous persons in health, poverty, education and human rights, and should be fed into the upcoming review of the Millennium Development Goals.

Addressing journalists at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said the lack of disaggregated data on indigenous people often meant that goals set by Governments to tackle poverty and other social ills did not address the particular situation of indigenous persons.

“The value of this report is really going to be far-reaching, because now we have really very clear information, data and statistics that are also coming from United Nations publications,” she said, explaining that the data in the report ‑‑ which was also being launched today in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Russian Federation and Belgium, and in the Philippines in February ‑‑ was not the sort Governments could deny, since it was collected by the United Nations through a rigorous process.

She said the report contained “damning statistics” on poverty among indigenous people, who made up one third of the world’s 900 million rural poor even when living on lands that were resource-rich.  It also described how States indulged in over-exploitation of resources without indigenous peoples’ consent.

“We live in territories which have the richest resources, whether this is oil, gold, forests, water,” said Ms. Tauli-Corpuz.  “And yet you find this kind of poverty.”

She said pockets of poverty in the world’s developed countries were commonly made up of the indigenous population.  Canada, for example, was perched high on the human development index, but its position would drop considerably if the situation of indigenous people were factored into the index, she said.

Speaking alongside Ms. Tauli-Corpuz, Myrna Cunningham, Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Autonomy and Development in Nicaragua, said land-rights issues figured prominently in the report, which had repercussions even on health.  One of the report’s co-authors and a trained surgeon, she said indigenous peoples’ loss of land had led to changes in diet and a disproportionate rise of diseases like diabetes in their community.  The indigenous population also suffered higher rates of cardio-vascular illnesses and, in some countries, had an average life expectancy that was shorter by 20 years, compared to the wider population.

Offering more highlights from the report, Ms. Cunningham said indigenous peoples suffered from higher rates of human rights abuses, in the form of violence against women.  And, the “commoditization” of indigenous culture risked impinging on the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination.

“It is very important that the report is coming at this time.  For example, the United Nations Development Programme will be working on the human development report in which the concept of development will be analysed,” she said.  “As indigenous peoples, we are offering an important tool with this report that should be considered in the discussions on new views of indigenous peoples’ development.”

Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said the next step was to publicize the report widely among Governments, stressing also the benefits of including indigenous peoples in the State’s search for solutions to global problems, like the economic crisis and climate change.

Asked to specifically comment on the role of indigenous people in tackling climate change, she said the indigenous community who were present at the recent Copenhagen Summit had managed to insert a reference to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the draft outcome document.  Although the draft was not adopted at that meeting, she said the insertion of such language into the draft offered hope that an eventual international agreement would include indigenous people in the global process for dealing with climate change.

Aside from climate change, among the emerging issues highlighted in the report was the increased militarization of indigenous territories, which Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said was at risk of becoming worse because of the war on terrorism.  A national security report published by the United States, for instance, had identified indigenous peoples as potential terrorists, which she said had come about because of their strong resistance against the exploitation of their territories.

Addressing the issue of United States army bases in Colombia, Ms. Cunningham said that indigenous communities in that country had been concerned by the placement of such bases on their land, and were now engaged in a dialogue with the Government.  There was no outcome, yet, on those talks.

Encroachment on indigenous territories was not only at the hands of the military, but also corporations, she said, explaining that, in Guatemala, indigenous peoples had consulted mining companies numerous times to try to become active parties to decisions to mine their lands.  The indigenous community there was now fighting to turn the results of those talks into binding agreements.

In Peru, however, arguments over mining on indigenous territory had turned violent, she said, causing 30 people to lose their lives in June 2009.  The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous persons had recommended that dialogue take place, but so far none had been held.

Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was currently exploring ways to work with the Special Representative on business and human rights to push Governments to adhere to the State duty to protect against human rights violations by third parties, including multinational corporations.  It would also advocate for more corporate responsibility to protect rights, and for greater access to both judicial and non-judicial processes for indigenous peoples.