State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - focus on culture and heritage

Minority and indigenous cultures under serious threat, state protections 'fall far short' – new comprehensive global survey

Photo details:
1. Members of the Endorois community in Kenya perform a dance. MRG.
2.State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 report, showing Cholitas dancing in Bolivia.
3. Kurds in Turkey.
4. Roma dance in Georgia. MRG.
5. Coptic Christians protest in Egypt. Nicole Salazar.
6. Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan - before and after they were destroyed. Babak Fakhamzadeh.
7. Tibetan opera in Lhasa, Tibet. Gunther Hagleitner.
8. Members of the Hazara community at a protest in Pakistan. ABC Open Riverland.
9. Kuna women sew molas in Panama. Rita Willaert.
10. Indigenous man in Canada. UN Photo.
11. Muslim women in France. Baba1948.
12. Maasai women in Tanzania. Carla Clarke/MRG.
13. Lake Bogoria in Kenya. Endorois living around the lake were evicted from their ancestral land to make way for a game reserve. MRG.
14. Street theatre performance to combat discrimination in Kenya. SAFE KENYA.
15. Street theatre performance in Morocco. MRG.
16. Seto people from Estonia, pictured in the Russian Federation. Helju Majak.
17. Members of Pakistan’s Sikh minority pray at a temple in Hassanabdal. Jared Ferrie/MRG.
18. Māori poi dancers in New Zealand. RaviGogna.












Minority and indigenous cultures around the world are seriously under threat, says Minority Rights Group International in its annual flagship report, State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, which focuses in 2016 on culture and heritage.

‘The destruction wrought by ISIS in Palmyra in 2015 quite rightly drew massive worldwide condemnation,’says Carl Soderbergh, MRG’s Director of Policy and Communications. ‘But too little has been said about the ongoing devastation facing numerous minority and indigenous cultures right around the world.’

The 2016 edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of armed conflict, land dispossession, forced assimilation and discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of minority and indigenous identities, namely their languages, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality.

In Iraq and Syria, minorities such as Christians, Turkmen and Yezidis, are being targeted with human rights abuses, including looting, house burning, torture, sexual assault and murder. Entire communities are being displaced from areas where they have lived for centuries. For smaller minorities, this means that their cultures are at risk of being totally eradicated.

Read more...minorityrights.org/?p=8768

• Minority Rights Group International is the leading international human rights organization working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples. We work with more than 150 partners in over 50 countries.

Contact:
Emma Eastwood (London, UK)
T: +44 207 4224205
M: +44 7989699984
E: emma.eastwood@mrgmail.org
Twitter: @MinorityRights #SWM2016