ANDAMAN ISLANDS: Can a tribal group that hunts with bows and arrows, has been devastated by a measles epidemic and numbers fewer than 300 be spared near certain extinction?
To mark the United Nations Day for Indigenous People today, British aid group Survival International has named the Jarawa people of the Indian Ocean Andaman Islands as one of three of the world's tribal groups most at risk of being wiped out.
The other two are the Ayoro-Totobiegosode of Paraguay - the most isolated Indians south of the Amazon basin - and the Gana and Gwi "bushmen" of Botswana, evicted from their land in 2002 to make way for diamond exploration.
"We've focussed on these three because their problems are very acute, but we are optimistic they can all be helped," Survival researcher and spokeswoman Ms Fiona Watson said yesterday.
"What it comes down to is rights. Indigenous people have rights and they are internationally recognised, but what right does anyone have to say they can't live the way they have for generations?" she said.
Founded in 1969 to support tribal peoples through public campaigns, London-based Survival International fights to secure property rights for small groups whose traditional way of life is increasingly at the mercy of governments and corporations.
"There are about 150 million tribal people - people who live off the land and provide for themselves - around the world, but many are being forced to give up their way of life without a choice and without a fair fight," Ms Watson said.
The UN has more recently taken up the mantle, establishing the International Day of the World's Indigenous People in 1994 and a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2002.
The forum, designed to address the poverty and discrimination indigenous people suffer, was set up after decades of lobbying from indigenous leaders.
In a statement, the UN said the Commission on Human Rights was preparing a draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. "The UN plays a hugely important role in helping indigenous and tribal people but at the end of the day it is a collection of governments and they don't like to criticise each other when these people are being trampled on," Ms Watson said.
Ecuador's powerful Indian movement has conceded that its short-lived partnership in government failed. Last year, Indians helped Col Lucio Gutierrez, who aided their 2000 revolt which helped overthrow then-President Jamil Maduad, win the presidential election. Col Gutierrez is of mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry. - (Reuters)