TEHRAN, 15 January 2010 (UNIC)--Indigenous peoples make up one-third of the world’s poorest and suffer alarming conditions in all countries. The UN State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Report reveals alarming statistics on poverty, health, education, employment, human rights, the environment and more.

According to the report launched Thursday at UN Headquarters in New York, indigenous peoples all over the world continue to suffer from disproportionally high rates of poverty, health problems, crime and human rights abuses.

The report says in the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population. In Australia, an indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. The life expectancy gap is also 20 years in Nepal, while in Guatemala it is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11. In parts of Ecuador, indigenous people have 30 times greater risk of throat cancer than the national average. And worldwide, more than 50 per cent of indigenous adults suffer from Type 2 diabetes – a number predicted to rise.

Indigenous peoples suffer from the consequences of historic injustice, including colonization, dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, oppression and discrimination, as well as lack of control over their own ways of life. Their right to development has been largely denied by colonial and modern states in the pursuit of economic growth. As a consequence, indigenous peoples often lose out to more powerful actors, becoming among the most impoverished groups in their countries.

Indigenous peoples continue to be over-represented among the poor, the illiterate, and the unemployed. Indigenous peoples number about 370 million. While they constitute approximately 5 per cent of the world’s population, indigenous peoples make up 15 per cent of the world’s poor. They also make up about one-third of the world’s 900 million extremely poor rural people.

Smoking and substance abuse are more common amongst indigenous peoples; suicide rates and incarceration rates are also higher. These problems are more pronounced in urban areas, where indigenous peoples are detached from their communities and cultures, yet seldom fully embraced as equal members of the dominant society. Indigenous peoples are also more likely to suffer from violent crime.

The well-being of indigenous peoples is an issue not only in developing countries. Even in developed countries, indigenous peoples consistently lag behind the non-indigenous population in terms of most indicators of well-being. They live shorter lives, have poorer health care and education and endure higher unemployment rates. A native Aboriginal child born in Australia today can expect to die almost 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot. Obesity, type 2 diabetes and tuberculosis are now major health concerns amongst indigenous peoples in developed countries.

Studies of socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in Latin America show that being indigenous is associated with being poor and that over time, that condition has stayed constant. Even when they are able to accumulate human capital [i.e. education or training opportunities], they are unable to convert that to significantly greater earnings or to reduce the poverty gap with the non-indigenous population. This finding holds for countries where indigenous peoples are a small fraction of the overall population, such as Mexico and Chile, as well as in countries where a large portion of the population is indigenous, such as in Bolivia.