IWGIA is a non-governmental human rights organisation promoting and defending Indigenous Peoples’ collective and individual rights. We have supported our partners in this fight for more than 50 years. We work through a global network of Indigenous Peoples’ organisations and international human rights bodies. We promote recognition, respect and implementation of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including the right to self-determination by virtue of which they can freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
Indigenous Peoples today, in all parts of the world, are still fighting discrimination and targeted violence, struggling against a shrinking civic space, lacking recognition of their rights as peoples, and suffering from land dispossession, evictions and the negative consequences of climate change and conservation efforts. Indigenous Peoples are also disproportionately suffering the effects of COVID-19 and its consequences, including increased repression by states that are using the pandemic as a way to enact laws that further encroach on their rights. For Indigenous Peoples, the long-term consequences of the pandemic may be devastating.
This Institutional Strategy analyses and exposes these challenges in order to effectively address them.
It outlines IWGIA’s vision, mission and core ambitions for the next five years, describing our pathway to fostering lasting change. Our pathway places our partners at the very centre and outlines our three core areas of work: documenting, advocating and supporting empowerment – what we call our Triangle of Change. The Institutional Strategy further outlines our implementation priorities, which specifically address the issues facing Indigenous Peoples, through our interrelated thematic programme areas, augmented by three cross-cutting methodologies.
Our Triangle of Change is our key instrument for fostering change by:
- Documenting the situation of Indigenous Peoples and the human rights violations they experience, thus contributing to knowledge and awareness of their circumstances and promoting respect for their individual and collective rights;
- Advocating for change from decision-makers at local, national and international levels, including active engagement in international networks; and
- Supporting the empowerment of Indigenous Peoples’ own organisations to act in order to claim and exercise their rights and to amplify the Indigenous Peoples’ movements at local, national and international levels.
