In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly agreed that the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples shall be observed every year on 9 August. The date marks the day of the first meeting, in 1992, of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

Poverty is particularly high among the world’s 250 million indigenous peoples. They face barriers to progress because of discrimination and their geographical location. Many have lost their land from prejudice, abuse and poor information about property rights. Often indigenous peoples are excluded from education, employment and health care.

Indigenous groups live in the highlands and rainforests of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the mountainous areas of the Near East and North Africa. The largest concentration, 70%, live in Asia and the Pacific region.

Asia’s rural poor - the upland dwellers, indigenous populations, ethnic minorities and particularly women in all these categories - are being bypassed by economic growth and development. IFAD has reoriented its development strategy to focus on upland and marginal areas so as to bring them into the mainstream of economic and social development.

Circumvented in government and private-interest policies, indigenous tribes in rural India suffer from increasing landlessness, job and food insecurity and severe debt burdens. Lands previously used by indigenous groups for subsistence agriculture, as a result of modernization, are now being taken over by wealthy landowners for economic development and agro-industries.

IFAD has designed and is directly supervising an eight-year tribal development programme reaching 74 000 marginal households in the country. The USD 41.7 million Bihar-Madhya Pradesh Tribal Development Programme is promoting household food security based on the sustainable use of natural resources. It includes a provision for educating participants in the laws affecting tribal populations and for a legal defence fund to cover any costs incurred in defending their rights.

Indigenous populations face obstacles to advancing mainly because of discrimination and their own geographical location. In the Near East and North Africa, they have little voice in government affairs. In Latin America, they are more likely to be poor, especially if they lack literacy in Spanish (or Portuguese).

In Latin America, the indigenous pastoralists of the High Andes puna of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru are among the poorest peasant communities of the region. Living at an altitude of more than 3 800 metres above sea level, these communities endure permanent freezing temperatures at night that prevent the cultivation of all known crop species with the exception of native tubers. Since the only productive option of the pastoralists is to breed and raise alpacas and llamas, IFAD has supported a programme that promotes improved breeding technology and training for the local population. A third phase of the project that was recently approved aims to consolidate technical advances to date and to promote better marketing of animal fibres, meats and other artisanal products.

In Guatemala, IFAD has launched a USD 26 million project, the Rural Development Programme for Las Verapaces, to reduce hardship among indigenous peoples living in the most environmentally fragile regions. The ten-year project endeavours to increase income opportunities and encourage indigenous and women’s organizations so as to improve the lives of 17 000 families.

Reversing the marginalization of indigenous peoples is urgently needed if the international development goal of halving the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty by 2015 is to be reached.