August 9 is the International Day of the World's Indigenous People. This year, the day is of special importance as the first in the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, which was proclaimed last year by the United Nations General Assembly and started on 1 January.

''The beginning of the new decade is a time to seriously consider how to continue to enhance the well-being and rights of indigenous peoples and support them in realizing their capabilities,'' said Vanda Altarelli, IFAD's adviser on indigenous peoples.

The new decade is a reiterated call to action for governments and all members of the international development community to work in partnership with indigenous peoples. The first priority of the second decade is to finalize negotiations on the draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, and to adopt it early in the decade. Work on the declaration has been ongoing for ten years.

Other important tasks ahead include addressing indigenous peoples' key concerns in the area of development, integrating indigenous perspectives into development processes at local, national and international levels and enabling indigenous peoples to participate fully in those processes. During the second decade, the issues of indigenous-specific indicators of progress and methods of collecting data disaggregated by ethnicity will also be addressed.

Speaking at the Fourth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in May 2005, José Antonio Ocampo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Coordinator for the Second Decade, noted that two themes had been proposed for the decade. One was the concept of partnership; and the other, the adoption of a human-rights approach to development, centred on the concept of identity. He considered propitious the fact that the end of the Second Decade in 2015 coincides with the target year for achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Cultures with much to contribute

There are about 300 million indigenous men, women and children worldwide. They are extremely diverse - more than 5,000 different groups of indigenous peoples live in more than 70 countries. They make up one third of the world's 800 million extremely poor rural people.

In many countries, indigenous peoples are the most severely disadvantaged. They are often forced to live on the least productive terrain, denied rights to land, forests and other natural resources that they have managed sustainably for millennia, and are marginalized by modern society.

Yet their value systems, spirituality, capabilities and cultures have huge untapped potential for sustainable development. Indigenous peoples play a crucial role in the stewardship of natural resources and biodiversity, and provide environmental services at local, regional and international levels.

Indigenous peoples have rich, varied and locally rooted knowledge systems. Their immense cultural diversity is extremely valuable in a world threatened by the homogenizing trends of globalization.

Today, there is a growing consensus that accountability is crucial to poverty reduction, human development and human security. The human-rights approach to poverty reduction emphasizes the obligations of governments and all partners in the development process, and requires that they be held to account for their conduct in relation to international human rights. This has led to greater emphasis on the obligations of governments and UN agencies towards indigenous peoples.

UN sources acknowledge achievements over the past decade, noting that several organizations and agencies have increased their activities relating to indigenous peoples. Ten years of work have served to raise the profile of indigenous peoples' concerns, and to improve awareness and understanding of their special needs.

Learning to work in partnership

IFAD has been working with indigenous peoples since it was created in 1978, initially offering solutions to boost agricultural production and income. Today, some 27 years later, IFAD emphasizes partnership with indigenous peoples, supporting their self-empowerment so that they can address the root causes of their marginalization. It backs them in their efforts to strengthen their own voices and ability to claim rights to land and resources, providing them with legal advice, assistance and training. Legal defence funds have been set up in India and Nepal , for example, to combat exploitation and protect the rights of indigenous peoples and women to land.

Over the years, IFAD has developed the expertise to address the following issues of crucial importance to indigenous peoples:

• securing access to ancestral lands and territories
• empowering indigenous peoples through capacity-building and genuine participation
• valuing and revitalizing indigenous knowledge systems and cultures
• promoting inter-cultural awareness
• supporting bilingual and cross-cultural education
• enhancing indigenous identity and self-esteem
• promoting, in a culturally sensitive way, indigenous women's capacity for autonomous action in community affairs
• strengthening indigenous peoples' institutions and their judicial systems
• fostering apex organizations and building coalitions of indigenous peoples

Although securing their land rights is the central focus of most IFAD-funded programmes and projects working with indigenous peoples, some - such as the Regional Programme in Support of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Basin (PRAIA) - also provide funding to enhance the cultural diversity of indigenous peoples.

In an innovative project in Nepal , indigenous men and women are being provided with information and training on their rights, and then enabled to assert those rights themselves. In Western Mindanao in the Philippines , IFAD has supported the documentation of indigenous knowledge about plants and other genetic resources; it has also assisted in the protection of the intellectual property rights of the knowledge holders.

In the new Development of the Central Corridor Project, in Ecuador, IFAD will support the revitalization and protection of the tangible and intangible heritage of indigenous peoples and the fostering of cultural microenterprises.

IFAD has also gained useful experience in conflict management and peace-making by working closely with several indigenous peoples' communities (for example in Las Verapaces, Guatemala ). This experience includes supporting the involvement of women as peace brokers in North East India.

Experience has also been gained in channelling resources directly to indigenous communities that demonstrate the capacity and willingness to manage and improve their own resources ( Management of Natural Resources in the Southern Highlands Project in Peru ; North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas in India ). Through these activities, indigenous peoples have increased their self-esteem, managerial skills and ability to negotiate with outside actors.

IFAD believes that, in spite of progress made so far, which has been achieved mostly through the work of indigenous peoples themselves, more strategic interventions, and more effective policy advocacy and promotion, are required to place indigenous peoples' perspectives and concerns before decision-makers at all levels.

IFAD is committed to taking advantage of the growing global focus on poverty reduction to ensure that indigenous peoples' concerns and vision of development are taken into account. In this regard, IFAD fully supports their claims for free, prior and informed consent to developments affecting their lands and natural resources.

New projects and activities

In 2004, IFAD allocated US$155.8 million in loans and US$2.7 million in grants for programmes and projects in support of indigenous peoples.

Amongst the grants, two are of particular significance. The first was provided to the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and the second to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Tebtebba Foundation to undertake an assessment of the achievements of the First International Decade of the World's Indigenous People in selected countries in South and South East Asia .

In 2004, IFAD also:

• held a seminar in Mankarai , India on ''Policy dialogue: enabling indigenous peoples to manage their natural resources,'' in collaboration with the Karl Kübel Stiftung Foundation
• financed a two-day meeting in the Bolivian Amazon, which presented the most successful initiatives of indigenous ecotourism in the region
• funded a stakeholders' consultation in Mali , on pastoral development strategies for rural poverty reduction in West and Central Africa
• cofinanced a regional consultation of indigenous women in Asia as a preparatory activity for the third session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, whose main theme was indigenous women

Under the auspices of PRAIA , an IFAD-funded programme in the Amazon, the Anaconda Film Festival was held in Bolivia . The festival screens films directed by indigenous film-makers and includes the presentation of awards. The President of Bolivia attended the prize-giving ceremony. In addition, six books on indigenous issues were published, again through PRAIA .

In 2004, the International Land Coalition (which is hosted and financed by IFAD) contributed US$108,000 under its Community Empowerment Facility Programme for two projects directly related to securing land rights for indigenous peoples.