State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous peoples contribute tremendously to humanity's cultural diversity, enriching it with more than two thirds of its languages and an extraordinary amount of its traditional knowledge. With over 370 million indigenous people in some 90 countries, the living conditions of these people is critical today. Poverty rates are significantly higher among indigenous peoples compared to other groups. While they constitute 5 per cent of the world's population, they are 15 per cent of the world's poor. Most indicators of well-being show that indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately compared to non-indigenous peoples. Besides facing systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic power; indigenous people continue to be over-represented among the poorest, the illiterate and the destitute. They are displaced by wars and environmental disasters; dispossessed of their ancestral lands and deprived of their resources for survival. For more on this report you can see:
http://www.un.org//esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP_web.pdf