Urgent Need to Tackle the High Level of Poverty and Inequalities Facing Undigenous Peoples:ILO

Manuela Tomei, Director of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Conditions of Work and Equality Department, addresses the opening meeting of the sixty-first session of the Commission on Stats of Women (CSW) on 13 March 2017~UN Photo by Rick Bajornas

The International Labour Organization (ILO) said there is an urgent need to tackle the high level of poverty and inequalities facing indigenous peoples.

According to a new ILO report, released to mark the 30th anniversary of the Indigenous and Tribal People’s Convention 1989 (No. 169), indigenous peoples are nearly three times as likely to be living in extreme poverty as their non-indigenous counterparts.

Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Manuela Tomei, Director of the Conditions of Work and Equality Department at the ILO, said, despite the fact the indigenous are more likely to be in employment than their non-indigenous counterparts, the problem lies in “the quality of the work.” She said, “Indeed 86 per cent of all indigenous peoples around the world work informally compared to 66 per cent of non-indigenous people.”

The report found that indigenous peoples also often experience poor working conditions and discrimination. Tomei said the biggest challenge to improving the living and working conditions of indigenous peoples is “the extremely high incidence of poverty and extreme poverty among them.”

Tomei said ILO recommends that Convention 169, “which is the only international treaty specifically dedicated to indigenous peoples,” is ratified by a much larger number of countries, adding that so far only 23 countries have ratified it.

The Director said we are in “a situation of crisis.” She said gathering better data is “absolutely essential to indeed inform better policy making” to address the poverty and inequalities facing indigenous peoples~ILO