IWGIA’s Africa program strategy was adopted in April 2004. Its thematic priorities are human rights, land rights, indigenous women’s rights, self-organization and empowerment. Geographically, IWGIA focuses on East Africa (mainly Kenya, Tanzania), Central Africa (mainly Rwanda, Burundi, Republic of Congo), and southern Africa (e.g. Botswana). Its key project partners are the Mainyoito Pastorali...

India voted in favour of the United Nations’ Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007. So did the majority of the other Asian countries, with a few exceptions such as Bangladesh and Bhutan who abstained. How then should we understand this over-all support for the Declaration by Asian states? Is it to be regarded as a critical event that signals a new readiness for serious en...

We are the indigenous peoples of Asia. We have lived in our territories alongside other peoples who in the course of history have come to dominate us. Our history has been questioned and our identity as indigenous peoples has been denied. As a result, our land, territories and resources have also been appropriated or made vulnerable. We, the indigenous peoples of Asia, draw our unity and solidarit...

Organisation is a sine qua non for the existence of any society and, over the course of history, highly organised movements have emerged in the Peruvian Amazon to face up to invaders. Indigenous peoples’ organisations as we know them today, however, i.e., permanent structures with the overall aim of defending the rights of the people they represent, are a relatively recent phenomenon. In the cas...

Of the 45 indigenous peoples in Russia with populations of fewer than 50,000, 40 live in the North, Siberia, and the Far East. These same areas are rich in natural resources, such as oil, gas and minerals, and they are the sites of large energy projects like pipelines and hydroelectric dams. Any industrial project taking place on indigenous peoples’ lands presents a threat and elicits concern am...

IWGIA’s collaboration with Russian indigenous peoples began following the foundation of RAIPON in 1990 at the III Congress of Numerically-Small Indigenous Peoples of Russia in Moscow. Three years previously, in 1987, an initiative on the part of Arctic scholars called “Anxious North” (Trevozhnyi Sever) had come into being. This was a small group of Moscow scholars working in the North who we...

Recent key regional and global scientific assessments (most notably, the Arctic Council’s Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment, and the national Canadian assessment of climate change) confirm that the Earth’s climate is changing in ways that may have irreversible impacts that will affect ecosystems, societies and economies on ...

In February 2008, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) organised and held a two-day conference on “Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change”, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference was considered as part of the preparations for IWGIA’s input to the 7th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues1 as well as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhage...

Desert ecosystems receive little rainfall, and are characterized by sparse vegetation and simple food webs. Around the desert edge and across many sub-tropical parts of the world are found semi-arid and sub-humid lands, which support unique species of plants and animals and a larger human population than deserts themselves are able to sustain. In parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, these pe...

The melting of Greenland’s massive inland ice sheet has become much-reported in the scientific literature as a potentially catastrophic example of the Arctic as a region experiencing unprecedented and rapid climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fourth global assessment concludes that airborne, satellite and seismic data indicate thinning around the periphery of...

Nepal is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is bordered by the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China to the north and India to the south, east and west. Nepal is also known as the country of Mount Everest ‘Sagarmatha jhomo-longma’, the highest peak in the world. The Himalaya mountain range runs across Nepal’s northern and western parts, and eight of the world...

The Mapuche of Chile are one of South America’s most prominent indigenous peoples, not only in terms of their numbers, which fluctuate around the one million mark, but also because of their long anti-colonial and post-colonial struggle and, more recently, because of their resistance to the neoliberal policies imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and implemented by democratic governments sin...

This issue of Indigenous Affairs focuses on the situation of the millions of indigenous peoples who are nomadic pastoralists. Nomadic pastoralists have unique cultures and make unique and produc-tive use of harsh environments. Nomadic pastoral-ists the world over are, however, the subject of an unusually large number of myths and misconcep-tions that have led to inadequate, often hostile de-v...

On the Botswana High Court made a historical ruling on the rights of the San/Bushmen people to live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Since the founding of the Bushman organisation, the First Peoples of the Kalahari, in the early 1990s the Bushmen have defended this right and in the end they brought the legality of the eviction from the Game Reserve to the Court. The recent ruling by the High ...

Gabon covers an area of approximately 26.7 million hectares and maintains some of the largest remaining rainforest in West Africa. Although the actual extent of forest cover is unknown, experts estimate between 17-22 million hectares, or 85% of the total land mass (Christy et al 2003). Indigenous hunter-gatherer communities (known variously as the Baka, Bakoya, Bagama, Babongo, Akoa, etc.) are loc...

The Mau forest complex measures approximately 400,000 hectares. It is the largest block of forest cover in Kenya. Located in the central parts of the Rift Valley province, Mau is a key water catchment area and the source of 14 out of 15 major rivers found in the western side of the larger Rift Valley, which runs almost across Africa. The forest feeds 5 major lakes, three of which are cross-boundar...

In 1999, the Tl’azt’en Nation, a First Nation in central British Columbia in Canada, and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) together founded the John Prince Research Forest (JPRF). The Tl’azt’en Nation numbers approximately 1,500 persons, about half of whom live in four villages within the group’s traditional territory. They speak an Athapaskan-family language, Dakelh (al...

Until 1997, Indonesia’s forestry policy was highly centralized and all logging permits were issued in the national capital, very often to people well connected to the government. During this period (1980s-1999) the estimated rate of deforestation was 1.6 million hectares annually. After the downfall of President Soeharto, a whole range of political reforms occurred in a very short time, includin...

In December 2010, after years of negotiations, an agreement on REDD was finally reached at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico. The agreement includes references to indigenous peoples and their rights, and in paragraph 72 of the agreement, country Parties are requested to ensure “the full and effective participati...

La Commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples a établi un Groupe de travail sur les populations/communautés autochtones qui a effectué une mission en République du Rwanda en décembre 2008, et ceci est le rapport de la visite. Le rapport donne un aperçu des réunions tenues avec les autorités gouvernementales, les organisations de la société civile, les communautés autoch...

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights' Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities undertook a visit to the Republic of Rwanda in December 2008. The country visit was designed to update the Working Group on the human rights situation of the Batwa population of Rwanda. It also sought to identify the challenges faced by the community and by the government and other stakeholde...

Indigenous Peoples are not at all mentioned or referred to in any ASEAN document, even though they are an integral part of the ASEAN Community and among its most vulnerable sectors, whose interest the ASEAN has committed itself to protect. The failure of the ASEAN to address the plight of its Indigenous Peoples despite its expressed commitment to human rights and social justice is a shortcoming t...

The Annual Report 2009 is a status report that describes the activities of IWGIA in 2009. You can order a copy through: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. document.getElementById('cloakca375ccf93185c363799ec0ea800946e').innerHTML = ''; var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addyca37...

La Déclaration des Nations Unies sur les droits des peuples autochtones (Déclaration) marque une étape importante dans la lutte des peuples autochtones dans le monde entier, incluant en Afrique. La Déclaration est l’instrument international des droits de l’homme le plus complet abordant la question des droits des peuples autochtones. Lors de sa 41ième session ordinaire tenue en mai 2001 ...

The United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) constitutes a landmark in the struggle of indigenous peoples worldwide, including Africa. It is the most comprehensive international human rights instrument to explicitly address the rights of indigenous peoples. At its 41st Ordinary Session held in May 2001, In Accra, Ghana, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ ...

As in many other parts of the world, the indigenous peoples of Africa are increasingly being dispossessed of their ancestral lands. It started during colonial times where many of them lost their land to European settlers. It continues today where conservation interests, commercial plantations, mineral exploitations, and other economic activities are leading to encroachments, expropriations and for...

This IWGIA Report documents the injustices experienced by the indigenous Ayoreo people in Paraguay, who have lost much of their ancestral lands to ranching, illegal sale of land and extractive industries - a development that threatens the physical and cultural survival of the groups of Ayoreos still living in voluntary isolation. This publication is aimed at demarcating the territory of the Ayoreo...

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights' Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities undertook a research and information visit to the Republic of Gabon in September 2007. This report gives an account of meetings held with government authorities, civil society organizations, indigenous communities and other stakeholders, it describes the situation of the indigenous population...