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Sunday, November 15, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Indigenous Rights
EDUCATION-THAILAND: Full Marks for Ethnic Tolerance Class
School holidays, which begins here in March and ends in May, have taken on a different ring this year for over 150 teenagers from Thailand's southern provinces, where an increasingly bloody insurgency is raging.CHILE: Indigenous and Rural Women Make Their Voices Heard
"It's our turn to speak! It's time to fight, to dream, to build, to sow, to participate." This was the slogan of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI)'s First Congress which ended Friday in the Chilean capital.CANADA: Development Aid as Counterinsurgency Tool
A soon to be completed Canadian Forces counter-insurgency field manual foreshadows the type of interventions that the military in this country is preparing for the coming decades, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.CANADA: Counterinsurgency Manual Shows Military’s New Face
Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada's Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counter-insurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.ECUADOR: Pressure to Make Water a Public Good
World Water Day will be marked Thursday in Ecuador by protests against the privatisation of water, the construction of dams, and the mining industry, and by demands for the new constitution to recognise access to water as a basic human right.MALAYSIA: Racial Melting Pot on the Boil
Asia's melting pot, Malaysia, is celebrating 50 years of independence from British rule but against a backdrop of mounting racial disquiet fuelled by race-based politics, redundant policies that divide and discriminate and affirmative action that favours native Malays over minority Chinese and Indians.BOLIVIA: The Complex Process of Designing a New State
A unified but decentralised state that recognises Bolivia's cultural and ethnic diversity is the vision that is gradually gaining broad support in the constituent assembly currently rewriting the country's constitution.RIGHTS-BURMA: Christians Pay for Junta's Insecurities
Burma's persecuted Christian minority is receiving a long overdue hearing in the Western capitals of the world, a turn that could invite more international pressure on the country's military regime, already under fire for a litany of human rights abuses.RIGHTS: Pacific Islanders Preyed on by Bio-Pirates
The Pacific region has long been a favourite target of gene hunters, unethical bio-researchers and "patent bottom trawlers" looking to profit from its unique flora, fauna - and human beings.ENVIRONMENT: Chevron Faces More Scrutiny in Ecuador over Pollution
Leaders of indigenous communities in Ecuador are pressing their government to investigate senior executives from U.S. oil giant Chevron for an alleged environmental fraud scheme in the mid-1990s related to a long-running six-billion dollar class action suit in the South American nation.BURMA: Women Take Brunt of Ethnic Minorities’ Struggles
At 17 she was in Geneva, not as a tourist but as an invitee speaker at the annual sessions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In 2005, aged 24, she had a celebrated hour-long meeting with U.S. President George W. BushCULTURE-INDONESIA: Ethnic Chinese Find New Acceptance
After banning its public celebration for almost 30 years Indonesia this week took the symbolic step of recognising Chinese New Year as a national festival.BURMA/THAILAND: Dams on Salween Threaten Indigenous Groups
Being a village headman means little if you live in a community nestling in the hills close to Thailand's northern border with Burma. More so, if officials have plans to use your village for a large ‘development' project.ARGENTINA: Mapuches Return to Benetton-Held Land
Mapuche Indians in the southern Argentine region of Patagonia, who in 2002 took part in a land dispute against the Italian textile group Benetton, have returned to occupy land belonging to the firm, reclaiming their ancestral rights.LATIN AMERICA: Protests Mount Against Mining Giant
Dangerous levels of lead and arsenic have been found in the blood of Honduran villagers living downstream from a controversial gold and silver mine owned by Canada's Goldcorp Inc., the world's third largest gold mining firm.SRI LANKA: Norwegian Truce Dead – All Sides Agree
Five years after the Sri Lankan government signed a Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement (CFA) with Tamil separatist rebels, all actors are now agreed that the document now remains solely on paper.CULTURE-ARGENTINA: Recuperating Indigenous Languages
With the aim of strengthening linguistic diversity in Argentina, the University of Buenos Aires language school has launched a successful programme providing instruction in the country’s most widely-spoken indigenous languages.PHILIPPINES: UN Lifeline Against Extra-Judicial Killings
By condemning the Philippines’ military for having a hand in a brutal campaign to eliminate politicians and activists with left-leaning views, a United Nations envoy may have thrown a lifeline to many whose lives may be in danger.MIDDLE EAST: Shia-Sunni Violence Spreads in Iran
A week after alleged Sunni militants blew up a vehicle transporting members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), killing 11 and injuring 18, sectarian tension is reported prevailing in the predominantly Sunni southeast that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.THAILAND: Bombings Say Muslim Rebels Won’t Negotiate
Malay-Muslim militants in southern Thailand marked the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year with a show of force that has left the military-appointed government in Bangkok scrambling for answers.SRI LANKA: Newsprint Shortage Adds to Curbs on Media
Residents of the embattled northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna who get to see the ‘Uthayan’ newspaper often get a copy that is thumb-worn and soiled from having passed through the hands of many avid readers.« 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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