Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
indigenous populations than in those without, not<br />
only for the indigenous peoples but also for nonindigenous<br />
groups living in the area. 170<br />
the dire situations that indigenous peoples face<br />
in Latin America is also evident in developmental<br />
indicators other than simple poverty rates. According<br />
to a study by the International Labour Organization,<br />
members of indigenous communities in Latin American<br />
earn approximately half of the income earned by the<br />
average non-minority citizen. 171 Such a statistic has<br />
obvious implications for indigenous peoples’ access<br />
to basic resources <strong>and</strong> services, including food,<br />
shelter, <strong>and</strong> healthcare, <strong>and</strong> underscores why the<br />
poverty rates among indigenous populations are so<br />
high. Indigenous peoples are also behind in indicators<br />
of overall health. Malnutrition rates, for example, are<br />
twice as high among the indigenous population than<br />
the majority ethnic groups. 172 unfortunately, as the<br />
overall population in most Latin American countries<br />
has seen progress toward economic development in<br />
recent years, this does not seem to be the case for<br />
indigenous groups. In Guatemala, the overall poverty<br />
rate has fallen almost thirty percentage points in the<br />
past twenty years, while the indigenous poverty rate<br />
has remained essentially the same. Some countries,<br />
like Chile, have seen poverty rates for indigenous<br />
peoples fall at the same pace as those for the general<br />
population, but they are the exception rather than<br />
the rule in Latin America. 173<br />
In Asia, another continent with significant<br />
indigenous populations, poverty rates for those<br />
indigenous peoples have been rapidly falling. In China,<br />
for example, the overall poverty rate has declined<br />
from 84% in 1981 to just 16% in 2005, <strong>and</strong> the rates<br />
among indigenous populations have actually fallen<br />
even more drastically than those for the majority<br />
Han ethnic group, though the overall percentage of<br />
indigenous poor remains higher than that of poor<br />
Han Chinese. Current estimates put the poverty rate<br />
among the indigenous population in China at 5.4%,<br />
by far the lowest among countries with a significant<br />
number of indigenous groups. 174 Vietnam <strong>and</strong> India<br />
have seen similar, though less extreme, progress,<br />
with poverty rates among indigenous peoples falling<br />
about 20% to current levels of 52.3% in Vietnam <strong>and</strong><br />
43.8% in India. An analysis of the statistics for Vietnam<br />
shows, however, that some changes in policy are<br />
necessary; while the poverty rate among indigenous<br />
peoples has fallen by about 20%, the poverty rate for<br />
the majority ethnic population fell over 40% in the<br />
same period. 175 While it is unclear whether declines<br />
in poverty rates mean that indigenous populations<br />
are actually doing better overall or, as this figure<br />
suggest, that there are other areas in which they still<br />
lag behind the majority ethnic group, these statistics<br />
In many of the world’s largest developing nations, the indigenous<br />
poverty rate is higher than that of the general population.<br />
41<br />
Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media <strong>and</strong> Design