Ecobreves – BOLIVIA: Protection for Isolated Peoples

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TARIJA, Nov 18 2006 (IPS) - At a conference Nov. 20-22 in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, experts, indigenous communities and government officials will propose public policies to protect isolated populations in South America's tropical jungles. These communities, also known as “uncontacted”, are descendants of those who resisted the inhumane exploitation of the rubber baron era in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and hid deep in the forests.

They are also survivors of the oil drilling that is going on today, as well as the extension of roads, the logging industry and the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

“The communities that live in voluntary isolation in the Amazon are the last isolated indigenous peoples existing in the world,” Pablo Cingolini, of the International Work Group on Indigenous Issues, one of the conference organizers, alongside the United Nations, told Tierramérica.

Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are the countries with the most isolated indigenous communities.