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Thursday, November 12, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Indigenous Rights
U.S.: Community in Crisis Looks to its Agricultural Roots
Renowned for its historic Native American pueblo, cultural ties to Spain, bohemian artists, and world-class ski resort, Taos is also one of the many communities in the U.S. facing food insecurity.Q&A: Bolivian Women’s Right to Land Thwarted by Patriarchal Traditions
Bolivian legislation on land ownership is highly favourable to women, but a lack of awareness makes it difficult to enforce these laws and ensure that women are able to obtain - and maintain - control of the land they farm.
DEVELOPMENT-CAMBODIA: Minority Languages Face Extinction
One of Cambodia’s oldest languages – S’aoch – appears headed for extinction in the next decade. Other languages spoken by its minority people are lining up to take the place of the 6,000-year-old language in the most endangered category.RIGHTS-GUATEMALA: Naming the “Disappeared”
Through the "My Name Is Not XX" campaign, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation is working to identify the remains of thousands of victims who were forcibly disappeared during the country's 1960-1996 armed conflict, by inviting their relatives to provide DNA samples.THAILAND: With Hmong Expulsion, Army Asserts Foreign Policy Role
The recent deportation of Hmong asylum seekers to Laos has shown that Thailand’s powerful military remains the dominant player in shaping the relationship between this South-east Asian kingdom and its immediate neighbours.TURKEY: Peace May Come to Pass in 2010
With newfound liberties for the Kurdish minority and the government's ‘Democratic Opening' initiative the prospects for peace in 2010 are brighter than they have been in the last 25 years. The fly in the ointment is the ban in December of the pro-Kurd, Democratic Society Party (DTP).POLITICS: Indonesia Mourns the Passing of a Beloved Leader
The news about fourth Indonesian president and cleric Abdurrahman Wahid being admitted to the hospital last week merited only a passing mention in the national media. It was overshadowed by reports on the country’s tumultuous political situation, such as allegations that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was involved in a banking scandal and the controversies hounding the country’s corruption eradication agency.BURMA: China’s Oil, Gas Pipelines Recipe for Abuse, Warn Activists
China’s growing dependence on military-ruled Burma to meet its energy demands is poised to take concrete form when, according to activists, work commences in the coming months on the construction of oil and gas pipelines.POLITICS: China Seen as Flaunting Growing Clout in Asia
If Asia, already unsettled by China's economic rise, needed a reminder that economic power would be followed by more political assertiveness, then none was more compelling than Beijing's unconcealed sway on Cambodia to expel 20 Uyghur asylum seekers over the weekend.GUATEMALA: Lynching, Another Face of Impunity
After a bus driver was shot to death in Sololá, a city in southwestern Guatemala, an angry mob captured two men and one woman suspected of committing the crime, beat them and burnt them alive in the central plaza.BOLIVIA: Native People Take First Steps Towards Self-Government
Indigenous people, who make up more than 60 percent of the population in Bolivia, South America's poorest country, are taking their first steps towards self-government under their own cultural traditions that date back to pre-colonial times.SOUTH AMERICA: New Map Outlines Guarani Territory
Some 100,000 Guaraní people live in the area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge, according to a new map drawn of the indigenous group's ancestral territory, which also highlights the threats, such as expanding soy cultivation, to their natural surroundings.
ZAMBIA: Let our Chiefs Govern
The Litunga of Barotseland, King of the Lozi, has no judicial or legislative authority. No supervisory control over government projects, and worst of all he cannot stand for elected office. Yet successive Zambian presidents have deferred to him.
COLOMBIA: Chicha, Fashionable Survivor
Chicha, a traditional homemade brew produced all the way from Mexico to Chile since the days of the Inca, has largely been a rural drink over the centuries. But it is enjoying a new popularity in bars and restaurants in Bogotá and other Colombian cities, as a hip alternative to mass-produced beer.JORDAN: Palestinian Refugees Live Out Lives in Limbo
Music enlivens the yellow taxi as it traverses the Jordanian capital. A small Palestinian flag hangs from the rearview mirror. Jihad, the cab driver, says his father fled here from the Palestinian West Bank in 1948.CULTURE-TURKEY: Kurdish Directors Make ‘National’ Cinema
A ban on the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in Turkey has not deterred Kurdish filmmakers from all over the globe gathering in this southeastern city to continue their struggle for recognition through cultural means.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientists Turn to Inuit for Clues
The Inuit people who live in and around the Arctic are among the worst victims of global warming, and scientists are now turning to their experience and indigenous knowledge to understand the staggering effects of climate change.
ARGENTINA: Solar Villages Light Up the Andes
The residents of the Puna, the dry Andean highlands in northern Argentina, are cut off from everything - except the sun. Living on arid land thousands of metres above sea level, they are on their way to becoming "solar villages."
CLIMATE CHANGE: Bringing the Rainforest to Copenhagen
As delegates deliberate over the extent carbon emissions will be curbed in the closing days of the U.N. summit here, the environmental ramifications of that agreement are likely to be felt in places far removed from the negotiating table, particularly among indigenous people on the front lines of climate change.INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: Obama’s $3B Settlement Not Enough?
Though pleased with the Barrack Obama administration’s decision to compensate the indigenous tribes for unjust occupation of their lands, American Indian activists are saying that Washington has to do more to heal their nations’ wounds.RIGHTS-GUATEMALA: Army Records Spur Hopes for Justice
Original Guatemalan army records on a scorched-earth campaign known as "Operation Sofía", presented as evidence in a human rights case in Spain, have bolstered hopes for justice among the relatives of victims of Guatemala's 36-year civil war in which more than 200,000 people, mainly Mayan Indians, were killed.« Previous Page — Next Page »
The planet's roughly 350 million indigenous peoples took notable steps on the international stage in the last decade. They got the world's governments to agree to create a body to represent them at the United Nations, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and to appoint a special rapporteur responsible for their human rights. In 2007 a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was approved by the UN. Yet the living conditions of most "tribal", "aboriginal", "native" or "first" peoples remain precarious. IPS, with its network of contributors at the UN and linked to indigenous communities worldwide, is committed to tracking the world community's efforts to do justice to the rights and aspirations of these peoples, with a special current focus on Latin America's 40 million rural indigenous peoples.
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