The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has impacted on all corners of the world and on all spheres of our lives and livelihoods. Indigenous Peoples have been disproportionately affected by the epidemic. This Annual Report will therefore give a broad overview of how the pandemic has affected the world’s Indigenous Peoples. IWGIA’s yearbook, The Indigenous World 2021, provides further extensive documenta...

We, the undersigned organizations, call on the United Nations Security Council to urgently impose a comprehensive global arms embargo on Myanmar to help prevent further violations of human rights against peaceful protesters and others opposing military rule. In recent weeks, Myanmar security forces have killed hundreds of people, including dozens of children, merely for exercising their rights to ...

Focusing on the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan 2019/20- 2023/24 The indigenous peoples of Nepal have been constantly advocating for inclusive and justifiable development in the nation. It is plausible to maintain inclusive democracy, equality and prosperity. Nepal has witnessed discrimination and oppression against historically marginalized communities based on ethnicity, race, sex, region, religion....

This book contains a series of essays predominantly written by Indigenous women from Myanmar. The essays show Indigenous women to be at the crux of climate change in Myanmar.

This report addresses the resurgence of positions within anthropology that favour States taking the initiative in the establishment of direct and permanent relationships with those Indigenous Peoples, or parts of them, that live in voluntary isolation.

This report presents the real-life experiences of Indigenous Peoples as they make their own decisions through the Indigenous Navigator’s tools and resources.

Since the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were promulgated, there have been growing concerns over human rights in business. Indigenous Peoples form the highest proportion of victims of such business activities.

The result of a collective and community-led data-gathering exercise relying on the Indigenous Navigator framework and tools, this report identifies and discusses the experiences, needs, concerns and aspirations of indigenous women in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The report sheds light on inequalities and intersecting forms of discrimination affecting indigenous women, which pla...

On the basis of a collaborative, community-led data-gathering effort and testimonies from indigenous communities, this report provides first-hand information on the situation of indigenous peoples in 11 countries where communities have participated in the Indigenous Navigator initiative. It highlights the differentiated impact that COVID-19 is having on indigenous peoples, which also varies from c...

On 8 October 2018, communities filed a complaint to the EIB’s Complaints Mechanism documenting that project authorities have left communities in the dark about the transmission line, its various impacts and the route of the line.

This report is the result of a process of review and feedback conducted between June and August 2020. The feedback was gathered through consultation, surveys and interviews with Indigenous Navigator Consortium members and coordinators at the national partner organisations who have been involved with implementation of the Indigenous Navigator project. Some partners have been implementing the Indige...

This report documents how government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have not only failed to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 on India’s Indigenous Peoples, but made their often already desperate situation even worse. To make matters worse, the government used the temporary paralysis of the country as an attempt to undermine existing environmental safeguards and laws protecting the rights of ...

This book forms an essential contribution to the process of legitimising the recognition and exercise of the world’s Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination in domestic and international law. It further offers a space for analysis, dialogue and debate aimed at coordinating visions and sharing experiences of the difficult path to building and practising autonomy and self-government.

Indigenous Peoples are at the heart of the struggle for equality, rights, participation and self-determination for a more sustainable and just world. At IWGIA we are proud to stand by and behind Indigenous Peoples. We thank all those who support us to do so. This annual report presents some of the many significant achievements IWGIA supported in 2019 for Indigenous Peoples' rights. 

Over the centuries, Indigenous Peoples have developed ingenious and dynamic ways of managing their constantly evolving territories while avoiding the depletion of natural resources. Some Indigenous lifestyles have faced various challenges and have led to a less sustainable management of their resources.

This book is a compilation of the articles on Nepal that have been published in IWGIA's The Indigenous World from 2006 to 2020.  You can also download the Nepali version here.

This case study unravels the example of how a customary institution is embedded in the social and physical uniqueness of a community of indigenous peoples. It demonstrates the value of recognizing and safeguarding the customary institutions and knowledge of indigenous peoples. This case study presents the facts—how the knowledge system and customary institutions of indigenous peoples are value-d...

This fact-finding mission report looks into human rights violations as well as abuses in the Chitwan National Park (CNP) of Nepal. following recent reports by BuzzFeed, The Kathmandu Post and other media, as well as other organisational reports, claiming the World Wide Fund for Nature Conservation (WWF) is responsible for gross human rights violations, including torture, sexual abuse and kill...

Since 2016, the Wampis women have been demanding that the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS) make changes to its social programmes to ensure they are geographically and culturally appropriate1 and to enable the women themselves to conduct quality assessments of the State’s education and health services in the communities. The following text has been written thanks to their part...

Against all the odds, and despite the challenges that climate change represents for Latin America, women are demonstrating day in, day out that they have the ideas and the unique and essential skills to propose a radical change in the matrix of civilisation at this crucial point in humankind’s history.

How can indigenous peoples survive the dismantling of public policies and rights acquired by decades of work in Brazil? This process, resulting from setbacks to democracy, as described by the authors, shows that this is an emergency situation. There is a need to seek alternatives and for pressure from indigenous and civic organizations to help indigenous peoples exercise their rights. This report ...

This book comprises a total of 14 articles addressing the issue of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon and its impacts, not only on the Amazonian environment and wildlife but particularly on the communities inhabiting the area. These impacts are being facilitated by informal dynamics for which the state is largely responsible and has failed to act promptly enough to put a stop to these dynamics a...

IWGIA’s latest human rights report examines the sociocultural impacts two particular projects – the Lake Turkana Wind Power project and Olkaria Geothermal Power plants – are having in several Indigenous communities in Kenya.

If we calculate all the risks, 90 million Adivasis are struggling for their survival, losing access to forests and suffering the gravest threat of being alienated from their forest lands and traditional habitations. This book is an attempt to understand the relationship between Adivasis and the forest, unfolding the ground realities of the Forest Rights Act. It exposes the dual role of the State ...

The purpose of this briefing paper is to provide data on: (1) the land tenure situation of Indigenous Peoples on a global level; (2) the trends of land grabbing; and (3) the drivers behind this phenomenon.

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 of union member harassment, questionable tax practices and denial of local Indigenous communities their ri...

Since early August 2019, the most widespread and enduring fires in Bolivia’s history have been recorded in the country’s lowlands (Tierras Bajas). Widespread due to the large area burned and enduring because climatic conditions, along with the negligence of the authorities and even of those involved in the conflict themselves (who have risked setting fires in order to prepare the land for cult...

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of the Government of India published the Draft National Forest Policy of 2018 on 14 March 2018 and is expected to finalise the policy soon.  This draft policy provides for the adoption of а completely new legal framework that is discriminatory towards indigenous peoples and seeks to take away the rights of the indigenous peoples already re...

The world today faces many challenges: a global climate and biodiversity crisis, rising inequality, shrinking civic space in many countries, and increasing distrust in international institutions and national political systems. Indigenous peoples make up five percent of the world’s population and are disproportionately affected by much of this; but they are also key to many of the world’s solut...

To create a room for indigenous peoples to discuss and analyse their experiences around autonomy and self-government, the international seminar "Right to Autonomy and Indigenous Self-Government as a manifestation of the Right to Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples" was held on March 11, 12 and 13, 2019 in Mexico. Indigenous representatives from Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Nicarag...