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UN publishes report detailing 'critical situation' of indigenous people
The United Nations has released a report highlighting the challenges faced by indigenous peoples, describing their situation as 'critical', and urging that land rights are crucial for their cultural and physical survival.
'The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples' asserts that 'many of these communities are now on the brink of what some describe as genocide', and highlights as particularly threatening the construction of dams and the clearing of forests for logging, mines and soy plantations.
The report says that these projects often cause large-scale environmental destruction, introduce diseases such as malaria and flu to which many indigenous people have little resistance, and result in the forced eviction of indigenous people from their ancestral lands.
It echoes the message of Survival's short report 'Progress Can Kill', which demonstrates that policies designed in the name of 'progress' often bring huge misery to tribal peoples in the form of disease, obesity, suicide, addiction and reduced life expectancy.