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News > World

UN: World Indigenous Peoples Still Among the Poorest

  • Indigenous women carrying water.

    Indigenous women carrying water. | Photo: EFE/Archive

Published 11 November 2015
Opinion

According to the United Nations, poverty seems to be the common denominator of world indigenous populations.

Indigenous peoples still suffer the consequences of historical injustice, such as colonization and land dispossession, oppression and discrimination, found a recent UN report from its Deprtament of Economic and Social Affairs.

Although the UN classifies about 370 million people as indigenous people, or 5 percent of the world population,  they represent one third of the 900 million poor people living in rural areas.

RELATED: Honoring Indigenous Resistance Day, Exposing Colonial Crimes

Moreover, more than half of indigenous people over 35 years old suffer from type 2 diabetes - a figure in constant increase. In some indigenous communities, diabetes reached pandemic proportions to the point where it became a threat to the community’s survival itself.

Indigenous people’s health is more at risk, meaning for instance they are more often subject to disabilities, they have a reduced quality of life, and they have a lower life expectancy. In Nepal or Australia, indigenous peoples can expect to live 20 years less than others in the country, in Guatemala, 13 years, in Mexico, 6 years.
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