Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, May 18 2005 (IPS) — More than 40 million indigenous people in Latin America suffer persistent disadvantages compared with non-indigenous people on almost every human development indicator from education to health and poverty despite gains in political representation, the World Bank said Wednesday.

”While some improvements have occurred in human development outcomes, particularly in education, these changes have yet to bring about substantial reductions in indigenous poverty,” the bank said in a report reviewing efforts to improve the status of indigenous people over the past 10 years.

The report, ”Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America: 1994-2004”, focuses on the region’s five countries with the largest indigenous populations: Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru.

In it, the bank makes four recommendations aimed at improving the situation. These include providing better education, promoting better health care, improving accountability in the delivery of social services for indigenous peoples, and improving efforts to identify and gather data on their communities.

The report says that indigenous people represent 10 percent of the region’s population but their income levels as well as human development indicators have consistently lagged behind those of the rest of the population.

”The report brings some evidence of positive changes in indigenous people’s conditions over the decade 1994-2004,” said Gillette Hall, World Bank economist and co-author of the study. ”For example, education rates among indigenous people have improved. However, the main findings really underline the fact that not much in terms of positive changes has occurred.”

Thousands of distinct ethnic groups with their own discrete language and culture remain today in different parts of the world. Many, especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia, still have their own food, medicines and clothing that come from their natural surroundings, which in part has put them in conflict with dominant populations.

The Bank warns that the results of its latest study augur badly for the economies of Latin America.

”Poverty rates among the indigenous population are higher and fall more slowly, which is particularly bad news for a continent that has set its sights on meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015,” said World Bank economist and study co-author Harry Patrinos.

But among the positive developments the bank finds is an increasingly active political role for indigenous communities.

Measured by indigenous political parties, indigenous elected representatives, constitutional provisions for indigenous people or indigenous-tailored health and education policies, their role has grown remarkably.

The report says that non-governmental organisations play a large role in indigenous political influence. In the last 20 years, voters in Bolivia, Guatemala, and elsewhere have increased the portion of the national legislature that is indigenous.

However, that increased representation has not translated into concrete benefits.

”Despite increased political influence, indigenous people still consider themselves extremely limited in terms of voice in governmental affairs, and associate this condition with continued poverty,” says the report.

The bank itself has come under fire for what critics have called its role in damaging the habitat and livelihoods of indigenous people by lending to projects that harm their land and culture.

”Part of the real story is how damaging are some of the investments they are already making in terms of the use of indigenous peoples’ territories and what sort of safeguards do they have in place to prevent violating the rights of indigenous people,” said Peter Kostishack, co-director of the non-governmental Amazon Alliance.

Critics of bank investments in timber, mining, and extractive industries say projects damage the way of life of many indigenous communities.

Roads constructed for timber and oil companies, cattle ranchers and miners, and funded by international financial institutions, they say, have opened up vast areas for outsiders to exploit and have made possible the destruction of millions of acres of rainforest and other natural habitat for indigenous people.

For example, they say indigenous people in Peru, including isolated populations are threatened by the Camisea Natural Gas Project, currently under construction in the Peruvian Amazon and aimed at gaining access 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and more than 600 million barrels of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) to fuel homes and industry in the region.

Bank officials say the lending agency is doing all it can to protect indigenous people and create better lives for them.

The say that the bank’s policy on indigenous people is constantly being re-evaluated and that the institution was the first to have a policy regulating work involving indigenous communities.

The World Bank says it approved more than 109 projects involving indigenous peoples over the past 12 years

”Our willingness to disseminate these results should be an indication of our interest and concern to do things right vis-a-vis and with indigenous people,” said Hall. ”So from my perspective as an employee of the World Bank, I never felt anything but support for working on those issues.”