The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples is one of the 60 “special procedures” of the UN Human Rights Council. The special procedures are independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. The
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The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 to tackle climate change. In 2015, the UNFCCC adopted the Paris Agreement, a universal agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of the Paris
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The UN Human Rights Council established the Forum on Business and Human Rights[1] in 2011 to serve as a global platform to “discuss trends and challenges in the implementation of the Guiding Principles and promote dialogue and cooperation on issues
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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established on 8 August 1967 with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) by its founding fathers, five of the now 10 Member States: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The other five Member States
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Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a country in Oceania that covers an area of 462,840 km2 and the eastern half of the Island of New Guinea and nearby islands. According to the National Statistics Office, it has a population of approximately 11.78 million across 22 provinces as of
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As of 30 June 2021, there were 984,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.[1] The most recent available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that, among Indigenous
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The number of Indigenous people in the United States of America is estimated at between 3.1 and 8.7 million,[1] of which around 20% live in American Indian areas or Alaska Native villages.
Indigenous Peoples in the United States are more commonly
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Sápmi is the Sámi people’s own name for their traditional territory. The Sámi people are the Indigenous people of the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula and large parts of the Kola Peninsula and they live in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. Traditionally, livelihoods such as
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Argentina is a federal country made up of 23 provinces and an autonomous city (Buenos Aires, the capital), with a total population of 45,892,285 million people, according to the 2022 census data. This last census does not provide specific information on the number of people in the country who
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Cambodia is home to 22 different Indigenous Peoples speaking at least 19 Indigenous languages.[i],[ii] With an estimated population of 170,000-400,000, they constitute approx. 1.1% of the
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Bangladesh is a country of cultural and ethnic diversity, with over 54 Indigenous Peoples speaking at least 35 languages, along with the majority Bengali population. According to the 2022 census, the country’s Indigenous population numbers approximately 1,650,478...
Gabon's total population is estimated at 2,397,368. The percentage of Indigenous Peoples in Gabon is thought to be less than 1% of the national population, or between 18,000 and 20,000 people.[i] This estimate will become clearer when the final
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Botswana is a country of 2,417,596 inhabitants, having celebrated its 57th year of independence in 2023. Its government does not recognize any specific ethnic groups as Indigenous, maintaining instead that all citizens of the country are Indigenous. However, 3.2% of the population
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The Nepal-Upper Trishuli–1 (216 MW) Hydroelectric Project, sponsored by the Nepal Water and Energy Development Company, is adversely affecting the Tamang Indigenous Peoples of Rasuwa, which the Government of Nepal recognizes as “Indigenous Peoples,” as do the core project lenders – namely
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Folkemødet på Bornholm nærmer sig og også i år er IWGIA repræsenteret ved en række arrangementer. Tilmed har vi i år udvidet folkemødeholdet betydeligt. Vi har nemlig fået et nyt hold frivillige, som har arrangeret ikke mindre end fire events. Herudover deltager vi i fire andre events.
The UN Human Rights Council established the Forum on Business and Human Rights[1] in 2011 to serve as a global platform to “discuss trends and challenges in the implementation of the Guiding Principles and promote dialogue and cooperation on issues
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The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (Permanent Forum) is an expert body of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) with a mandate to provide advice on Indigenous issues to ECOSOC and, through it, to the UN agencies, funds and programmes; to raise awareness on
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Stop the construction of Tamakoshi-Kathmandu 220/400 kV Transmission Line Project in Shankharapur-3, Kathmandu
We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, strongly condemn the ongoing repression by Nepal’s police and armed police forces on the Indigenous
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In the context of Indigenous Peoples' participation in the 11th UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, the Indigenous Caucus made statements at both the opening plenary and closing sessions warning that Indigenous Peoples’ survival as distinct peoples is under threat.
2021 marked a decade since the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs)[1] were approved by the
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2021 marked a decade since the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs)[1] were approved by the Human Rights Council. The GPs set out the obligations of states under international human rights law, including that applicable to
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In a historic judgment by the Kenyan Environment and Land Court in Meru the title deeds of the land on which the Lake Turkana Wind Project (LTWP) sit have been declared “irregular and unlawful”. The case which began in October 2014 and finally ended on 19 October 2021 found that the title deeds
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COP26 – the two-week UN Climate Change Conference – begins next week in Glasgow.
As in previous years, IWGIA will be there in partnership and alongside Indigenous Peoples to support their engagement, messages and mission to influence the outcomes of this key climate conference,
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Shifting to electric vehicles (EV) is seen as an important step towards a greener future. However, the process ofextracting nickel, a crucial component of EV batteries, very often is not environmental-friendly. The world’s largest producer of nickel, Nornickel, has been destroying
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BY JOANNA BARNEY FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS.
Despite this Caribbean region’s natural wealth, Wayuu children in La Guajira are dying of hunger and
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In this report, we will see that the situation of the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and communities is at extreme risk of setback, especially as a result of a coalition of forces under the coordination of sectors interested in expanding the agricultural frontier over Indigenous
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BY PUINAMUDT FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS
Oil exploitation in the region of Loreto has affected the environment, the roles of the ecosystems, health,
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BY MIGUEL LOVERA , JIEUN KANG, MIGUEL ÁNGEL ALARCÓN, NORMA FLORES ALLENDE AND LEONARDO TAMBURINI
Close to 150 members of the Ayoreo people in voluntary isolation survive in the Chaco region in the border between Bolivia and Paraguay. Among the signs that evidence their
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In 2020, the Government of Peru allocated 260 million Peruvian Soles (PEN) (approximately USD 72 million) of public funds to remediate tropical forest sites damaged by oil exploitation on Indigenous territory in the Pastaza, Corrientes, Tigre and Marañon river basins. With this, the government
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Coal mining is destroying the forests of Siberia. Contamination of the taiga and rivers is harming the Shor people, who live from hunting, gathering and fishing. Anyone who stands up to the government and companies in defence of the right to nature suffers threats and harassment.
2020 was a critical year for human rights around the world. Added to the restrictions that many states had already placed on the exercise of these rights both in the global North and South, triggering the protests referred to in The Indigenous World last year, restrictions were
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There seem to be particular difficulties in conducting a census of Gabon’s population and figures therefore vary depending on the source. The latest figures from the 2010 census give a total of 1,480,000 inhabitants, more than 600,000 of whom live in the capital and its surrounding
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In Kenya, the peoples who identify with the Indigenous movement are mainly pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, as well as some fisher peoples and small farming communities. Pastoralists are estimated to comprise 25% of the national population, while the largest individual community of
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South Africa’s total population is estimated at around 50 million people, and Indigenous groups make up approximately 1% of this figure. Collectively, the various African Indigenous communities in South Africa are known as the Khoe-San/Khoisan, comprised of the San and the Khoekhoe/Khoi-Khoi.
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Indigenous Peoples in Uganda include former hunter-gatherer communities, such as the Benet and the Batwa. They also include minority groups such as the Ik and the Karamojong and Basongora pastoralists who are not recognised specifically as Indigenous Peoples by the government.
Bangladesh is a country of cultural and ethnic diversity, with over 54 Indigenous Peoples speaking at least 35 languages, along with the majority Bengali population. According to the 2011 census, the country’s Indigenous population numbers approximately 1,586,1411 which represents
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As of 2017, the Indigenous Peoples of Malaysia were estimated to account for around 13.8% of the 31,660,700 million national population. They are collectively known as Orang Asal. The Orang Asli are the Indigenous Peoples of Peninsular Malaysia.
The population census conducted in the Philippines in 2010 for the first time included an ethnicity variable but no official figure for Indigenous Peoples has been released yet. The country’s Indigenous population thus continues to be estimated at between 10% and 20% of the national population
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The officially recognised Indigenous population of Taiwan numbers 571,816 people (2019), or 2.42% of the total population. Sixteen distinct Indigenous Peoples are officially recognised. In addition, there are at least 10 Pingpu Indigenous Peoples who are denied official recognition. Most of
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Since the 2017 census,1 and despite constant increases in numbers since the 1990s, the Indigenous population has not shown any great changes. When considering their demographic for public policy and regulatory purposes, they are still given as 12.8% of the total population, or
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According to the national census conducted in 2018,1 the Indigenous population in Colombia has grown by 36.8% and now accounts for 4.4% of the country’s total population, or 1,905,617 Indigenous individuals across all peoples.
Ecuador’s Indigenous population accounts for close to 1.1 million people out of a total population of more than 17,300,000. There are 14 Indigenous nationalities living in the country, grouped into different local, regional and national organisations. Some 24.1% of the Indigenous population
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French Guiana is an overseas department and region of France in South America. It is bordered to the west by Suriname and to the south and east by Brazil. It has a population of 268,700 inhabitants (INSEE, 2017). The interior of the country is covered by dense equatorial forest that is only
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According to figures from the 2018 census, Guatemala has a population of 14.9 million inhabitants, 6.5 million (43.75%) of which self-identify as Indigenous, from the Maya, Garífuna and Xinca Indigenous Peoples, or Creole (Afrodescendants). The Maya can be further divided into 24 groups: the
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There are 68 different Indigenous Peoples that inhabit Mexican territory, each of which speaks a native language of their own. These languages form 11 linguistic families, comprised by 364 dialectal variants. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 25.7 million
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According to the 2007 Census, there are more than four million Indigenous persons in Perú: 83.11% Quechuas, 10.92% Aymaras, 1.67% Asháninkas and 4.31% belonging to other Amazonian Indigenous Peoples. The Database of Indigenous or Native Peoples (BDPI) notes the existence of 55 Indigenous
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The Indigenous Peoples of Suriname number approximately 20,344 people, or 3.8% of the total population of 541,6381 (census 2012). The four most numerous Indigenous Peoples are the Kaliña (Carib), Lokono (Arawak), Trio (Tirio, Tareno) and Wayana. In addition, there are small
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The recitals to Venezuela’s Constitution recognise the country as a multi-ethnic and pluricultural nation while Article 9 establishes that Indigenous languages also have official status. According to official estimates, Venezuela’s Indigenous population currently accounts for approximately 2.8%
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Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) has been a self-governing country within the Danish Realm since 1979. The population is 88% Greenlandic Inuit out of a total of 56,225 inhabitants (July 2019).1 The majority of Greenlandic Inuit refer to themselves as Kalaallit.
Indigenous Peoples are not recognised by Russian legislation as such; however, Article 69 of the current Constitution guarantees the rights of ‘Indigenous minority peoples’. The 1999 Federal Act “On Guarantees of the Rights of the Indigenous Minority Peoples of the Russian Federation”
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Sápmi is the Sámi people’s own name for their traditional territory. The Sámi people are the Indigenous people of the northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula and large parts of the Kola Peninsula and live in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. There is no reliable information on the
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Indigenous Peoples in Canada are collectively referred to as “Aboriginal Peoples”. The Constitution Act of 1982 recognises three groups of Aboriginal Peoples: Indians, Inuit and Métis. According to the 2016 Canadian Census, there were 1,673,785 Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, accounting for 4.9%
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The number of Indigenous people in the United States of America is estimated at between 2.5 and 6 million,1 of which around 20% live in American Indian areas or Alaska Native villages. Indigenous Peoples in the United States are more commonly referred to as Native groups. The state
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Papua New Guinea (PNG), formally the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania that encompasses the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and covers an area of 462,840 km2.1 The country’s name comes from “Papou” which, according to the naturalist
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Eritrea borders the southern Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. It emerged as an Italian colonial construct in the 19th century, superimposed on Indigenous populations.
Botswana is a country of 2,250,000 inhabitants that celebrated its 50th year of independence in 2016. Its government does not recognise any specific ethnic groups as Indigenous, maintaining instead that all citizens of the country are Indigenous.
While much of the world has focused on the fires raging in the Amazon, the world’s largest forest–the Siberian Taiga in Russia–has been on fire for most of 2019.
Since January this year, more than 130,000 square kilometres of land and forest—an area the size of Greece—has been burned in
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In the current global economic consensus of neoliberalism, maximizing profit is prioritized on behalf of respecting international human rights regulations. Ensuring multinational enterprises implement adequate corporate responsibility in Peru has been troublesome. This report describes issues
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Despite being a small group of only eight people among the more than 1,000 participants at the UN Climate Meeting in Abu Dhabi in June, indigenous peoples were able to have their voices heard and put indigenous peoples’ rights on the agenda.
Successive UN Special Rapporteurs on the rights of indigenous peoples have expressed serious concerns in relation to the growing negative impacts of foreign investment on rights of indigenous peoples worldwide.
These investments often involve extraction of natural resources and large
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A reportby the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on extractive industries and its impact on the human rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-decendent
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Indigenous residents of Ivanovskoye village in Selemdzhinski District in Amur Region in Russia's Far East are outraged by the plans of a UK based gold mining company to start an open cast gold mine less than two kilometres from their village without their consent. I village gathering
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In West Siberia’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, an indigenous Khanty elder, who is the keeper of the sacred lake Imlor, is facing up to two years behind bars after defending himself and his reindeer against stray dogs which had been illegally brought into the area by oil workers.
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The Russian state-owned hydropower corporation RusHydro" and the Chinese "Three Gorges" corporation have signed a deal over the joint realisation of a large project in the Far East of the Russian Federation. The cost of the project may amount up to 230 billion rubles (4 billion EUR or 5
...This short video shows how the pastoralist communities in Laikipia, Samburu and Isiolo in Kenya came together to raise awareness about the situation of their access to water from the Ewaso Ngiro River that will be gravely affected by a planned mega dam.
In an unprecedented move, the World Bank will be proposing that governments could ‘opt-out’ of requirements designed to protect indigenous peoples from unintended and negative consequences from development activities funded by the multilateral lender. In a leaked draft of new environmental and
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Oil workers are trying unsuccessfully to extend a road to an oil field through a sacred lichen grove and Khanty ancestral lands 180 km from Nizhnevartovsk.
On 28 December 2013, in a rushed proceeding, after only two parliamentary readings, the State Duma adopted a bill amending the Federal Act “On specially protected conservation areas”, which may strip indigenous peoples “Territories of Traditional Nature Use” of any effective protection.
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In 1994, the world’s worst ever onshore oilspill hit the district of Usinsk, just north of Izhma district in Russia. Since then, the Komi speaking ethnic group Izvatas (Komi-Izhemtsy) have viewed the oil industry’s operations with great anxiety. Recently the Izvatas gathered and issued
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Focus on Africa This year, the regional theme on the UNPFII was Africa. The book launch therefore focused on the situation of indigenous peoples in Africa, taking advantage of the presence of many of our indigenous partners to make presentations. Our speakers included Mr.
...According to AIPP the government of Indonesia has said it will revoke business permits it has given to companies operating in customary forests after the Constitutional Court annulled its ownership of customary forests.
James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, says it is important to stop multinational companies from working under varying levels of human rights standards. "One of the things I'm exploring is to what extent they hold themselves to the same standards, or are held
...The Ecuadoran government is committed to promoting large-scale mining, and to do so it must implement national legislation that, although contrary to constitutional principles, satisfies the economic interests of multinational mining companies that have been reluctant to invest in the country
...The highest percentages of indigenous people in proportion to the total national population are in China (36 percent), South Asia (32 percent) and Southeast Asia (10 percent), according to “Indigenous Peoples, Poverty, and Development”, a treatise on indigenous peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin
...Several hundred protesters set off from an Amazon province where a Chinese company has been authorised to develop a huge open-cast copper mine. Ecuador's main indigenous organisation, Conaie, says mining will contaminate water and force people off their land. President Rafael Correa says it
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Over 370 million individuals worldwide are Indigenous. Mostly inhabitants of developing countries, they represent more than 5,000 distinct peoples. Indigenous Peoples are particularly vulnerable to industrial development.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi who appeared at a ceremony in Jinka, a town in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional State, on January 25 to celebrate the 13 Pastoralists Day announced his government’s plan to embark on a mega irrigation plan using the Omo river’s
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Indigenous peoples in Africa face a whole range of problems and suffer from serious human rights abuses. African indigenous peoples are among the poorest and most marginalised populations in Africa. Whether hunter-gatherers or pastoralists, their traditional way of life is often based on
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Indigenous Peoples win Prize on Oil Issue
On 13 March 1997, the Peruvian indigenous organisation, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios (FENAMAD) received the Bartolomé de las Casas award from the Spanish Prince Felipe of Asturias in Madrid. FEnamad's
IWGIA - International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs - is a global human rights organisation dedicated to promoting and defending Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Read more.
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IWGIA's global report, the Indigenous World, provides an update of the current situation for Indigenous Peoples worldwide. Read The Indigenous World.
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