Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)

Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM) 

World Model United Nations 2013 

Study Guide

Contact Us 

World Model united Nations 2013 

info@worldmun.org 

www.worldmun.org 

CONteNtS 

Letters 

Letter from the Secretary General 

Letter from the Under-Secretary General 

Letter from the Chair 

Introduction 

History of the Committee 

04 

05 

06 

08 

08 

Topic Area A 

10 Statement of the Problem 

12 Causes of Language Endangerment 

17 Current Situation 

20 Should We Care About Language Endangerment? 

25 Possible Solutions 

27 Past International Action 

28 QARMA 

28 Key Actors and Positions 

29 Suggestions for Further Research 

30 

Topic Area B 

Statement of the Problem 

32 Causes of Minority Poverty 

40 Current Situation 

44 Possible Solutions 

45 Past International Action 

47 QARMA 

47 Key Actors and Positions 

48 Suggestions for Further Research 

49 

Conclusion 

Position Papers 

49 Closing Remarks 

50 Bibliography 

Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design

Letters 


Letter from the Secretary-General 

dear delegates, 

it is my pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 22nd session of World Model united 

Nations! My name is Charlene Wong, and i am the Secretary-General of WorldMuN 2013. 

Within this document you will find the study guide for your committee. The conference 

staff for WorldMUN 2013 has been working tirelessly over the past months to provide 

you with an unparalleled conference experience, beginning with this guide. Each Head 

Chair has researched extensively to provide you with a foundation for each committee’s 

topic areas. 

We encourage you to use this study guide as the starting point for your exploration of 

your committee’s topics, and your country or character’s policies. The WorldMUN Spirit 

invites you to step into the shoes of your country or character, and to immerse yourself in 

the committee by researching and developing a full understanding of the issues, perspectives, 

and possible solutions on the table. We offer several additional resources online, 

including our WorldMuN 101 Guide and Rules of Procedure, updated for this year. Both 

are available at www.worldmun.org. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to 

contact your Head Chair or Under-Secretary-General. 

WorldMUN believes that the impact of delegates over the four days of conference goes 

far beyond the walls of the committee room. Therefore we are pleased to announce that 

resolutions passed at the 2013 conference in this committee will be sent on to the relevant 

body in the United Nations. 

Please enjoy reading this study guide, and I look forward to meeting you in Melbourne 

in March! 

Sincerely, 

Charlene S. Wong 

Secretary-General 


secretarygeneral@worldmun.org 

Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design 

4

Letter from the Under-Secretary-General 


It is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you to the General Assembly of the 22nd 

World Model United Nations. Over the last few months, we have been earnestly preparing 

for your rapidly approaching arrival in Melbourne. Your chairs have tirelessly labored 

to produce substantive material of the highest quality, which has and, I believe, will continue 

to distinguish the WorldMuN committee experience as foremost in the world for 

rich debate and fecund collaboration. 

I am overjoyed and humbled to be your Under-Secretary-General for this year’s GA, for it 

is certainly not one to be missed. For this session, the organ features a compelling mix 

of traditional GA mainstays as well as innovative committee experiences that our chairs 

have produced to tackle challenging world problems in novel ways. From endangered 

languages to urban crowding, a wide spectrum of committee topics has something to 

offer for every delegate, and our seven passionate chairs are excited to share their interests 

with you. These chairs have also dedicated themselves to creating a GA experience 

that transcends both the limitations and promises of the large committee sizes, pursuing 

a vision in which GA delegates enjoy all the fluid, intimate debate of smaller committees 

while gaining the caucusing potential and expansive representation of the GA. 

This study guide provides you with an excellent first step to prepare yourself for the first 

day of committee. the material here represents what your chair feels are the most important 

aspects of the topic areas and serves as both an introduction as well as a bridge 

to more in-depth research. If ever at a loss for where to start, always turn to the study 

guide first. Additionally, there are resources online at our website – including our World- 

MUN 101 guide and updated Rules of Procedure – to prepare you for committee. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or your chair. As a former 

WorldMUN chair, I know how much effort is invested into the committee experience by 

delegates and chairs alike, and we are all available to help make this conference the best 

WorldMuN yet! 

Sincerely, 

Scott yu 

under-Secretary-General of the General 

Assembly 


ga@worldmun.org 


5



It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee 

at World Model United Nations 2013! My name is Sam Pokross, and I am excited 

to serve as your chair for the week that you will spend in Melbourne next March. This 

conference will be my second WorldMUN and my first trip to Australia, and I am looking 

forward to sharing my experience with all of you on this committee! 

I am a senior at Harvard, concentrating in Linguistics with a focus on the psychological 

aspects of language cognition. Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, i went to high 

school in Cambridge, right down the street from Harvard. I participated as a delegate at 

Model UN conferences in high school, but, since coming to college, I have focused my 

time and energy on being a staffer. By the time we all arrive in Melbourne in March, I will 

have staffed thirteen conferences both on the substantive and the executive side, including 

as the Director-General for Harvard National Model United Nations 2013. Overall, 

WorldMUN 2013 will be my 22nd and final Model UN conference. Outside of Model UN, I 

conduct research on language development in a psychology laboratory and participate 

in the International Relations Council, the umbrella organization for IR-related groups on 

campus. When I am not doing work for my classes or for my extracurricular activities, I 

enjoy watching mind-numbing reality TV, eating delicious food, and going for long walks 

along the Charles River. 

I chose to chair SOCHUM for WorldMUN 2013 because I think that the issues that fall 

under the committee’s mandate are those for which the United Nations can have the 

greatest impact. While it is difficult to solve complicated geopolitical problems, you, as 

representatives of the nations of the world, can work together to draft a plan to improve 

the quality of life of a certain population segment or to protect the world’s cultural heritage. 

The two topics up for debate are the fate of dying languages and the role of ethnic 

minorities in development. The first topic concerns a key facet of the protection of cultural 

heritage. With about half of the world’s languages spoken by fewer than 3,000 people, 

there is substantial risk that these languages will go extinct in the 21st century, taking with 

them a significant part of the cultures associated with their respective language groups. 

The second topic addresses a serious problem facing the rapidly developing countries of 

Asia and Africa. As citizens of the majority ethnic group gain more wealth, members of 

indigenous minorities are often left behind, without access to the same infrastructural 

improvements, governmental services, or educational and employment opportunities. 

Both of these topics call for innovative and thorough solutions, and I am confident that 


6


you will be able to work together to develop an effective plan during the four days of 

debate. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about these topics areas 

or Model UN in general. I hope you enjoy learning about these topics, and I look forward 

to seeing you in Melbourne! 

Sincerely, 

Sam Pokross 

Chair, SOCHUM 



7

Introduction 

The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee 

(SOCHUM) is one of the most important and 

contentious bodies within the United Nations. One 

of the founding missions of the united Nations 

is the universal protection of human rights, and 

SOCHUM is the committee of the General Assembly 

where discussions of human rights issues take 

place. SOCHUM’s mandate also covers a number 

of other social, humanitarian, and cultural topics 

from discrimination to drug control. the range of 

problems debated in the Social, Humanitarian and 

Cultural Committee ensures conflict between UN 

member nations, but the success of the body has 

been in bridging these differences to solve some of 

the world’s greatest challenges. 

The topics that I have chosen for SOCHUM to discuss 

at WorldMUN 2013 cover two of the fundamental 

tasks of the body. The fate of endangered languages 

will force member nations to confront a pressing 

issue of intangible cultural heritage. Although 

over six thousand languages are currently spoken 

across the globe, this number is rapidly dwindling, 

as colonization, economic pressures, state policies, 

and discrimination force minority groups to abandon 

their mother tongues in favor of languages of 

dominant ethnic majorities. The committee will have 

to develop methods for documenting endangered 

languages before they die and plans for ensuring 

that minority language speakers can have full access 

to public services, education, and employment 

without switching to a dominant language. the 

impoverishment of indigenous populations touches 

on the universal right to economic development. 

Millions of indigenous peoples live in acute poverty 

because of trade liberalization, a disregard of their 

land rights, and a lack of civic participation, and their 

dire economic situation has stunted further progress 

towards many of the Millennium Development 

Goals. While the international legal precedent for 

helping indigenous peoples escape poverty exists, 

it is up to the committee to institute proposals for 

the implementation of developmental measures for 

indigenous groups. Both of these topics will force 

the committee to come up with creative solutions to 

some of the world’s most pressing problems. 


The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee 

is the third of six main committees of the united 

Nations General Assembly. Created at the first 

session of the General Assembly in 1946, it consists of 

representatives from all 193 UN member nations, with 

each country receiving one vote on all procedural 

and substantive matters. As a main committee 

of the General Assembly, SOCHUM is responsible 

for passing resolutions with recommendations on 

a number of important social, humanitarian, and 

cultural problems. Of all of the General Assembly 

committees, which include disarmament and 

International Security, Legal, and Administrative 

and Budgetary, SOCHUM has perhaps the widest 

range of topics under its mandate. the committee 

is responsible for all debate within the General 

Assembly on human rights, and more than half of the 

draft resolutions that it considers during each session 

fall under this agenda item. Additionally, SCOHUM 

discusses a number of other issues, including “the 

advancement of women, the protection of children, 

indigenous issues, the treatment of refugees, the 

promotion of fundamental freedoms through the 

elimination of racism and racial discrimination, and 

the right to self- determination,” as well as “important 

social development questions such as issues related 

to youth, family, ageing, persons with disabilities, 

crime prevention, criminal justice, and international 


8

drug control.” 1 Each session, the Social, Humanitarian 

and Cultural Committee considers about sixty draft 

resolutions on these different topics and makes its 

recommendations through a vote of the majority of 

the UN membership. 

during the past sixty-six years, the Social, 

Humanitarian and Cultural Committee has seen 

more colorful debate than perhaps any other body 

of the General Assembly because of the nature of 

the topics that it discusses. Member nations have 

hurled accusations of human rights violations across 

the floor of the chamber of the UN Headquarters in 

New York, and there has been genuine ideological 

differences among them on many of the most pressing 

humanitarian crises of our time. 2 3 SOCHUM has also 

seen a clear manifestation of the rising influence of 

developing countries in the United Nations; as their 

membership has increased significantly since 1960, 

SOCHUM has focused less on issues of individual 

rights, a path favored by Western nations, and more 

on group rights, an area of concern for the third 

World. 4 Despite the conflicts that have arisen in the 

committee, SOCHUM has been the site of a number 

of triumphs for the united Nations system. Because 

of its emphasis on women’s rights, it has always had 

more female delegates than any other committee. 5 it 

has also drafted some of the important resolutions 

in the history of the united Nations, including the 

International Covenant on Economic, Social and 

Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on 

Civil and Political Rights, the two of which took over 

ten years to write. 6 

Because so much of its work falls under the 

mandate of other main committees and united 

Nations organizations, the Social, Humanitarian and 

Cultural Committee has sometimes been considered 

to be the “problem child” of the General Assembly. 7 

On the other hand, one can consider this to be one 

of the greatest strengths of the committee. SOCHUM 

is forced to work closely with other bodies within 

the united Nations system, which forces greater 

understanding and compromise. Additionally, the 

topics that fall under the mandate of SOCHUM 

do have a unifying theme, as these are the issues 

The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee was created at the first session of the General Assembly in 1946. 


9

that the General Assembly can actually attempt to 

solve. Complex economic and financial issues are 

beyond the control of such an organization, and two 

sovereign nations in conflict are unlikely to come to 

peace because of a General Assembly reprimand. 

Social, humanitarian and cultural issues, however, 

require the unification of interests that cross borders 

and the implementation of solutions by all the nations 

of the world. it is with this optimism that the Social, 

Humanitarian and Cultural Committee tackles two 

pressing problems: the fate of endangered languages 

and the impoverishment of indigenous populations. 

Topic Area A 


At first, the fate of endangered languages may 

appear to be a less pressing and critical issue than 

many of the others that the united Nations faces 

today. With the threat of a nuclear war hanging over 

the daily negotiations of the world’s leaders and 

countless families living in destitution, why would 

the United Nations take the time to discuss an issue 

of such seemingly little importance? upon further 

analysis, however, language endangerment is about 

more than just the future of linguistic diversity. The 

problem of language endangerment is intrinsically 

connected to debates over intangible cultural 

heritage, individual and communal identity, economic 

opportunity, and minority rights, which are all subjects 

deemed important by the international community. It 

is with these broader issues in mind that we consider 

the fate of endangered languages as a question for 

the international community to solve. 

Having begun on an international scale only twenty 

years ago, the study of endangered languages is so 

young that there is no agreement on the terminology 

to be used when discussing this topic. The simplest 

distinctions divide languages into three categories: 

safe or viable, those with a healthy number of 

speakers and a high likelihood of maintaining this level 

in the next century; endangered, those with a smaller 

number of speakers and a significant chance of losing 

all of their speakers in the next century; and extinct, 

those with no remaining speakers. An additional 

term that is often employed in the literature of the 

topic is moribund, which refers to languages that 

still have older speakers but are no longer learned as 

the mother tongue by children. Some linguists and 

anthropologists divide the category of endangered 

languages into subcategories based on how extreme 

the risk of extinction is, ranging from languages that 

still have robust numbers of speakers to those with 

only a few elderly speakers remaining. 8 

While the number of speakers is the most obvious 

signal of the status of a specific language, there is no 

set definition of how few speakers a language must 

have in order to be considered endangered. The same 

number of speakers may correlate to a safe language 

in one location and an endangered language in 

another. in most places, for example, a language 

with five hundred speakers would be on the verge 

of extinction; on the Pacific islands, however, there 

are a number of languages that are thriving with five 

hundred speakers. 9 thus, the percentage of the local 

population that speaks the language in question is 

an important factor for determining endangerment. 

this example shows that the percentage of the local 

population that speaks the language is an important 

factor. If the speakers make up a small part of the 

population, the language is likely in decline, but 

a language that makes up the majority of a small 

community may be secure. 10 Conversely, a large 

number of speakers does not make a language 

immune from endangerment, especially if there are 

political factors working against the language, like 

the institution of a dominant official language or 

languages. Lombard, a language spoken in the north 

of Italy, for example, has over three million speakers 

10 


The regions shown on this map are language hotspots and are especially susceptible to language endangerment. 

but is considered “definitely endangered,” while 

Picard, a language in southern France with 700,000 

speakers, is on the list of “severely endangered” 

languages. 11 

Regardless of the terminology and definition, most 

endangered languages have a number of similar 

features. They generally, though not always, have a 

small number of speakers, who constitute a minority 

of the population in the region in which the language 

is located. The speakers are usually older, and some 

do not have full competence in the language. One 

of the major hallmarks of an endangered language is 

lack of transgenerational transmission, which means 

that children are not acquiring or using the language. 

This situation is worsened by the fact that, because 

many members of the community do not speak 

the language, and the national government of its 

respective country does not recognize it, a dominant 

language monopolizes public life, including the legal 

system, governmental administration, and education. 

Endangered languages are also defined by the 

attitudes that speakers and nonspeakers have toward 

them. Nonspeakers perceive endangered languages 

to be low-prestige dialects while some speakers 

of an endangered language often view it, and even 

their culture, as inferior to the one of the dominant 

language and culture of the population. Finally, most 

endangered languages have little documentation and 

few written records. 12 

these signs of language endangerment form the 

basis of attempts to classify languages using the 

terms listed above. To date, the most standard criteria 

published for determining language endangerment 

was created in 2003 by a United Nations Educational, 

Scientific and Cultural Organization Ad-hoc expert 

group on the subject. The eight main factors that they 

proposed for classifying languages are as follows: (1) 

transgenerational transmission, (2) absolute number 

of speakers, (3) proportion of speakers within 

the total population, (4) loss of existing language 

domains, (5) response to new domains and media, 

(6) material for language education and literacy, (7) 

governmental and institutional language attitudes 

and policies, including official language status and 

use, and (8) community members’ attitudes toward 

their own language. the existence of documentation 

is another factor that determines how urgently 

preservation efforts are needed. 13 

Despite the body of literature on the statuses 

of specific languages, the problem of language 

11 


This figure shows how many different factors go into determining the vitality of a language. 

endangerment is proceeding at an unprecedented 

rate. Globalization, urbanization, and nationalism 

are forcing indigenous peoples to abandon their 

mother tongue in favor of a dominant language, and 

these abandoned languages are disappearing at a 

rapid pace. As we shall see below, estimates vary as 

to the extent of the problem, but it is possible that 

more than half of the languages spoken across the 

world today will be extinct by 2100 if the international 

community does not act now. The loss of over 3,000 

languages will have a crippling effect on a number of 

academic disciplines, including anthropology, history, 

and literature, as well as on the preservation of 

local knowledge and the proliferation of indigenous 

cultures. The problem of endangered languages 

therefore far surpasses issues of linguistics and 

requires an international solution to prevent this 

devastating loss to humanity. 

Causes of Language Endangerment 

the causes of language endangerment are as 

diverse and varied as the endangered languages 

themselves and encompass a range of political, 

economic, and psychological factors. in some 

situations, determining why a language is losing 

speakers is easy; in others, the causes may be more 

subtle and gradual. Usually, a number of different 

factors interact to lead to the endangerment of a 

specific language. 

Historical Factors 

Before the 20th century, the most prominent 

cause of language endangerment and death was the 

elimination of the entire population of speakers. The 

elimination of a population could occur through an 

invasion by another population speaking a different 

language or through natural disasters. 14 european 

colonization, for example, has had a major impact 

on the diversity of languages in the rest of the world 

through the spread of dominant european languages 

such as English, French, and Spanish. These languages 

serve as lingua francas, or common languages, 

between individuals who otherwise could not 

communicate, but, in the process, the development 

of international lingua franca has led speakers to 

abandon their indigenous languages. Before the 

Spanish arrival in Latin America, for example, the two 

12 


most widely spoken languages were Nahuatl of the 

Aztec Empire and Quechua of the Inca Empire, and 

small communities employed thousands of other 

unique languages; over the course of two centuries 

following the Spanish colonization, many of these 

smaller languages became extinct, and the number 

and prestige of Nahuatl and Quechua speakers 

dropped significantly. 15 Originally, the Spanish 

conquerors used Nahuatl or Quechua as a lingua 

franca only for their colonial administration and 

missionary work, but as more Spanish settlers came 

to Latin America, Spanish gradually replaced these 

indigenous languages in most public domains. 16 

Invasion and colonization are often quickly 

followed by the spread of disease, which can have 

a deadly effect on a population and its languages. 

Approximately 90% of the indigenous population 

of the Americas died because of diseases that the 

Europeans brought with them, most significantly 

smallpox; the death of the vast majority of the 

indigenous population was accompanied by a 

drastic drop in the speakers of all of the native 

languages and the disappearance of many language 

communities. 17 While no longer accompanied by 

colonization, the spread of disease remains a major 

threat to the existence of many minority languages 

today. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, for example, 

disproportionately affects minority populations, 

many of whom have their own languages. In Nigeria, 

many of the smallest of the 470 languages have seen 

a drop in the number of speakers in the past thirty 

years because of deaths related to the HIV virus. 18 

types of natural disasters that can lead to 

language endangerment and death include those 

that kill speakers and force a population to relocate 

such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and famine. The 

Irish potato famine of the 1840s caused the death or 

emigration of about one-quarter of the population, 

the majority of which came from rural areas where 

Irish was more commonly spoken. A similar situation 

may be occurring in Sudan today, where the ongoing 

famine is threatening the population of about fifteen 

languages that have fewer than one thousand 

speakers. 19 On 17 July 1998, an earthquake in the 

mountains of Papua New Guinea, a country known 

throughout the linguistic community for its bounty of 

indigenous languages, killed over 2,200 rural villagers 

and displaced more than ten thousand. These victims 

came primarily from four small language communities, 

and as they have relocated to other locations, these 

languages have undergone a drastic reduction in 

the number of speakers. 20 As evident from these 

examples, the effects of natural disasters on language 

endangerment are closely related to other factors 

like urbanization and economic opportunity, further 

discussed below. 

Finally, the spread of religion has also been a 

factor that has historically led to the extinction or 

endangerment of certain languages. the spread of 

islam throughout the Middle east and North Africa, 

for example, replaced a number of ancient languages, 

like Aramaic, Coptic, and Berber with Arabic, which 

remains the predominant language across the region. 

While the invasion and colonization of Muslim raiders 

contributed to this phenomenon, the spread of Arabic 

was accomplished primarily through the conversion 

of local populations to islam. 21 the endangerment of 

languages via the spread of religion also occurred in 

many european colonies, where, after gaining their 

first converts through the indigenous languages, 

missionaries proceeded to convince the native 

populations to switch to the european language that 

they felt was better suited for the study of Western 

religion. 

Modern Factors 

A major cause of language endangerment in modern 

times is an attitude among most states favoring the 

use of one or a small number of official languages. This 

13 


attitude is most prominent in education, where the 

dominant language is often used exclusively from the 

primary level onward. 

In some cases, even 

though many minority 

children have not had 

the opportunity to 

learn the dominant 

language before they 

enter the education 

system, they are 

punished when they 

use their indigenous 

language. 22 in Africa, for 

example, all secondary 

education is conducted 

in a european language 

such as English, French, 

or Portuguese, and 

none of the languages 

that are native to the 

continent are used at all; 

only a small percentage 

of these languages are 

even used in primary 

education. 23 Historically, the birth of state policies against 

the use indigenous languages paralleled the rise 

of nationalism and 

the formation of the 

concept of the nation 

state. in general, the 

empires that dominated 

Europe before the 

19 

in such 

countries, other 

public services, like 

the justice system and 

employment programs, 

are also conducted in 

the dominant language 

or the language of the 

relevant European 

colonizer, and speakers 

of small, indigenous 

languages do not have the ability to navigate the 

maze of government bureaucracy to gain access to 

these opportunities. 

th century tolerated 

minority languages; the 

Ottoman empire was 

especially accepting 

of smaller languages 

and allowed local 

administration and 

education to operate 

in those languages. 24 

The mid-19th century, 

Many African countries have European languages as the official or one however, saw the 

of the official languages. 

birth of the nation 

state, the idea that a 

government derived 

legitimacy by ruling 

over a unitary ethnic or 

cultural group. in order 

to claim legitimacy 

under this definition, 

many governments 

began to impose the 

dominant population’s 

language on the 

minority population. 

the fact that there 

were minority linguistic 

As people move from rural areas to cities, more languages will become 

groups in the first 

endangered and eventually extinct. 

place suggests that 

the concept of a nation state has always been more 

theoretical than pragmatic, but in order to maintain 

the myth of the nation state, governments had to 

14 


drive minority languages into the private sphere 

and insist on the use of the majority language in 

administration, education, and commerce. this logic 

has led to the drastic reduction of living languages 

in Europe, where most countries currently have one 

dominant language that every resident is expected to 

know. 25 In France, for example, there were a number 

of independent communities that had their own 

language before the French Revolution, including the 

Bretons, Alsatians, and the Occitanians. in order to 

unify France under their control, the revolutionaries 

instituted French, which was the language of highest 

prestige at the time, as the official language of the 

state. Since 1800, the numbers of speakers of Breton, 

Alsatian, and Occitan have dropped precipitously, 

such that Breton and Occitan are considered to be 

severely endangered languages today. 26 in defense 

of the idea of a unifying language for a successful 

state, many point to Canada, india, and Belgium as 

countries where linguistic and ethnic conflicts have 

arisen after multiple language communities were 

allowed to exist. 27 

interestingly, it is not only the attitude of states 

against minority languages that leads to language 

endangerment, but also the self-perception of many 

minority language speakers that their language is 

inferior in some way. A good example of this negative 

self-perception can be found among the speakers of 

Haida and Tlingit in Southeast Alaska in the United 

States. Many Haidi and Tlingit speakers believe that 

God does not like their languages, an idea that was 

perpetuated by church officials during the conversion 

of the native population of the region. While churches 

generally do not encourage this belief today, Christian 

missionaries have spread the idea that God does 

not like many indigenous languages throughout the 

world, and this view still remains in many areas. 28 

Speakers of Haida and Tlingit also express shame and 

embarrassment toward their own languages. Older 

speakers often recall memories of being punished 

in school for using their indigenous language and 

thus do not encourage the younger generations to 

learn and utilize the language. Many believe that 

they are backwards or undeveloped for speaking an 

indigenous language. 29 This negative perception of 

their own language is often encouraged by the fact 

that many of these languages lack an established 

written literature, which makes them seem inferior 

to the dominant language. 30 Many parents also 

think that the differences between their indigenous 

languages and English prohibit a child from learning 

both languages successfully, so they do not pass 

Haida or Tlingit to their children and do not support 

programs to protect these endangered languages. 31 

This negative self-perception that many endangered 

language speakers have toward their mother tongue 

emerges ultimately from the attitudes of the state 

and dominant language speakers. 32 Dressler provides 

a model for linguistic endangerment that effectively 

exemplifies the connection between state and majority 

language attitudes and such negative self-perception. 

According to his model, minority language speakers 

undergo social subordination by dominant language 

speakers through restricted access to education, 

public services, and employment. This subordination 

leads minority language speakers to internalize the 

stigmatization of their language and to develop a 

negative perception of their mother tongue. Because 

of this negative self-perception, speakers of minority 

languages often restrict the use of their language to a 

small set of domains, usually in the private sphere. This 

restriction leads to endangerment as speakers begin 

to abandon the language. Finally, the fact that their 

language is endangered reinforces the community’s 

negative self-perception, making the model cyclic. 33 

in addition to the myth of the nation state, 

certain other commonly held beliefs contribute to 

state policies against minority languages and to the 

15 


negative perception that many endangered language 

speakers have with regard to their language. The 

first is the idea of a linguistic survival of the fittest, 

or a “Social Darwinism of language” as Dorian calls 

it. Some people believe that, as with the natural 

world, languages that are more suitable for high 

levels of thinking and expression will eventually take 

over weaker languages; most of the languages that 

are considered to be the “fittest” are the dominant 

European languages like English, Spanish, and French. 

This theory is doubtable for a number of reasons. 

First, unlike animals in nature, which must occupy 

separate habitats to some extent, multiple languages 

can coexist in one, multilingual speaker. Secondly, 

the language most commonly cited as the “fittest,” 

English, is very difficult to learn as a second language 

due to its irregularities, so it is hard to argue that it 

is the best language for clear expression; similarly, 

Mandarin Chinese, the language with the most native 

speakers, is also very difficult to learn. Finally, the 

powerful languages of many great civilizations, like 

Ancient Greek and Sumerian, have died out, showing 

that the “fittest” languages do not always survive. 34 

While it is clear that the theory of the survival of the 

fittest does not apply to language, it is nonetheless 

a commonly held view that discourages individuals, 

communities, and governments from attempting to 

save endangered languages. 

A second common belief that encourages 

language endangerment is the idea that bilingualism 

is an unhealthy situation for a speaker. Some contend 

that it is only possible to have full command of one 

language and that bilinguals cannot truly speak either 

language. in order to learn a politically or economically 

dominant language, according to this belief, a speaker 

must give up his or her mother tongue. 35 Numerous 

studies have proven that multilingualism actually 

grants cognitive benefits to speakers, who have 

stronger cognitive functioning and resist the mental 

effects of aging more easily. This negative perception 

of bilingualism, however, still remains strong in some 

parts of the world. 36 On the one hand, this false belief 

encourages speakers of minority languages to stop 

speaking their first language and to avoid teaching it 

to their children in the hopes that they can achieve 

full command of the dominant language. On the other 

hand, it also prevents state policy from attempting to 

protect minority languages from endangerment or 

extinction in the process of teaching the dominant 

language. 

The most significant cause of language 

endangerment today, and the cause with the most 

modern factors, is the cultural assimilation and 

linguistic dominance that accompanies urbanization 

and globalization. The past century has seen an 

unprecedented shift in the global population away 

from rural villages to urban centers. In these cities, a 

lingua franca is necessary for communication across 

tribal, ethnic, and linguistic groups, and this language 

is almost exclusively the dominant majority language. 

Urbanization thus leads to language endangerment 

in two ways: the decline in the number of speakers 

in the original communities and the abandonment of 

the indigenous language upon relocation to cities. 37 

The phenomenon of the loss of native traditions, 

including language, through urbanization is referred 

to as cultural dislocation. 38 The effects of urbanization 

are closely related to those of industrialization as well; 

the mass labor in the factories that employ many of 

the new residents of these cities must communicate 

using one language, which usually ends up being the 

language of the majority population and of the elite. 39 

Globalization has had an effect on minority 

languages similar to that of urbanization, as the 

two phenomena are very closely related. Today, the 

growth of multinational companies and the necessity 

of communicating across borders in virtually all fields 

have ensured that opportunities for socioeconomic 

16 


improvement are available exclusively in dominant 

languages. 40 today, the most dominant language 

across the world is English, but Spanish, French, 

and Portuguese are also languages that have 

provided employment for indigenous populations. 

in the process of learning a dominant language as 

a method of socioeconomic improvement, many 

minorities stop speaking their indigenous language 

either through disuse or active abandonment, a 

phenomenon called social dislocation. 41 Often, 

the economic effects of globalization on minority 

languages are tied closely to other causes of language 

endangerment. Because most African countries offer 

no education in indigenous languages, for example, 

minority populations must start using the dominant 

language if they wish to attend secondary school or 

university and hold a well-paying job. The dislocation 

of a population because of a natural disaster can also 

lead to the abandonment of indigenous languages 

and their subsequent endangerment, as the 

speakers often must utilize a different language to 

find employment in their new home. 42 Additionally, 

globalization can also lead to language endangerment 

through exposure to advertising, newspapers, and 

television in the dominant language of the state. 

Many indigenous languages lack their own media, so 

speakers of these languages are consistently exposed 

to information in the dominant language via radio, 

television, and newspapers, which can contribute to 

the disuse of the mother tongue and the adoption of 

the dominant language. 43 

As is obvious in their descriptions, the causes of 

language endangerment are by no means mutually 

exclusive; in fact, they almost always interact to reduce 

the number of speakers of an indigenous language 

and eventually eliminate the language altogether. 

An official policy against an indigenous language, for 

example, may reduce the economic opportunities 

available in that language, which encourages speakers 

to abandon their mother tongue for the dominant 

language. Alternatively, the idea that bilingualism is 

unhealthy may lead to negative self-perception by 

speakers of both a dominant and a minority language 

and cause them to pass only the dominant language 

onto their children. Thus, when evaluating an instance 

of language endangerment, it is vital to examine all 

of the factors, political, economic, and psychological, 

that have led to the decay of a specific language. 

Current Situation 

Given the numerous causes for language 

endangerment outlined above, it is not surprising 

that more languages are nearing extinction than ever 

before. There are a number of ways to quantify the 

issue of language endangerment, and each method 

reveals an additional aspect of the problem. 

The first way to quantify language endangerment 

is by examining the number of speakers of both the 

dominant languages that are driving indigenous 

languages toward extinction and the indigenous 

languages themselves. Fortunately, the Summer 

Institute of Linguistics (SIL) has been publishing a 

book of statistics on language since 1951 entitled 

Ethnologue: Languages of the World. According 

to an analysis of the Ethnologue by David Crystal 

about ten years ago, eight languages (Mandarin 

Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, 

Russian, and Japanese) each have over 100 million 

speakers and together have nearly 2.4 billion. With 

the next twelve on the Ethnologue’s list, the top 

twenty languages encompass half of the world’s 

population. 44 As Crystal’s analysis was completed 

with data from 1999, these figures are even higher 

today. the Ethnologue’s 2009 edition reveals that 

over 94% of the world’s population speaks 5.6% of the 

world’s languages, those with more than one million 

speakers. 45 These figures show just how widespread 

the international dominant languages have become. 

Conversely, the distribution of indigenous 

17 


languages is equally as problematic for the issue of 

language endangerment. Over one-quarter of the 

world’s languages have fewer than one thousand 

speakers, and just over half have fewer than ten 

thousand speakers, a level that puts them at an 

increased risk for extinction. 46 Crystal’s analysis of 

the Ethnologue finds over fifty languages with just 

one speaker, which, since language is by definition a 

communicative tool between people, are effectively 

dead already. In combination, the prevalence of 

dominant languages and the small number of 

indigenous languages explain the magnitude of the 

problem of language endangerment today. 

Another way to look at the competition between 

dominant and indigenous languages is to investigate 

which languages receive official recognition from 

states, as the lack of official recognition is a leading 

cause of language endangerment. Given the number 

of states and the number of languages, each state 

would need to recognize an average of thirty-two 

unique languages in order for all of the languages 

of the word to receive official status somewhere. 

The actual figures, however, fall well below this. The 

majority of states worldwide are unilingual, and no 

state comes close to this thirty-two-language mark; 

the countries with the most official languages are 

India, with twenty-two, and South Africa with eleven. 

Compounding the problem is that the dominant 

international languages are officially recognized in 

multiple states, increasing the number of indigenous 

languages without any recognition even further. 

English, for example, has official status in fortyfive 

countries, French in thirty, and Spanish and 

Arabic both in twenty; overall, these dominant 

languages have recognition in well over one hundred 

countries. 47 Looking beyond official recognition, one 

scholar found that English alone was a “significant” 

language, meaning either official or prominent for 

business, in about one hundred countries. 48 

Instead of looking at the distinction between 

dominant and indigenous languages, we can examine 

the number of languages spoken on each continent 

and the percentage of those that are endangered. 

Such an analysis will allow us to determine on which 

regions the international community should focus its 

efforts when fighting language endangerment. The 

regions with the fewest languages are europe and 

the Middle East. Only 275 of the world’s languages 

(about 4%) have native speakers in Europe and 

the Middle east. 49 Most of the languages in these 

regions are relatively stable because of the history of 

powerful centralized governments, nation-states, and 

international trade, which have already weakened or 

eliminated a significant number of local languages, 

but there are still some endangered languages in the 

area. 

Approximately one thousand of the world’s 

languages (15%) are spoken in the Americas, with more 

than three-quarters of those concentrated in Latin 

America. 50 the situations for endangered languages 

are significantly different between North America and 

Latin America. In North America, only two indigenous 

languages are considered to be completely safe 

from endangerment over the next hundred years, 

Greenlandic inuit and eastern Canadian inuit, largely 

because these populations have remained isolated 

from the centers of political power. About 86% of the 

indigenous languages of North America are moribund, 

meaning that they are no longer spoken by the 

youngest generations. Most of these languages will 

become extinct in the subsequent century, including 

two-thirds of the indigenous languages of Canada in 

the next fifty years. 51 In Latin America, the situation is 

less bleak, with only 17% of Central American and 27% 

of South American languages considered moribund. 52 

That said, there are still some instances of severe 

language loss in Latin America. Brazil, for example, 

still has over two hundred languages, but this figure 

18 


The vast majority of languages have fewer than 100,000 speakers, which puts them at risk for extinction. 

is about one-sixth of the estimated number of 

languages in existence at the beginning of European 

settlement. uruguay has no indigenous languages 

left, as the entire native population has either been 

driven out or integrated into the white majority. 53 

Africa provides another interesting case for the 

study of endangered languages. While the continent 

encompasses about two thousand, or 30%, of the 

world’s languages, 54 only about two hundred of 

these languages are in danger of extinction. this low 

number, relative to those of the other continents, is 

due primarily to the fact that the dominant european 

languages have not spread as extensively throughout 

Africa as they have through the rest of the world. Still, 

the causes of language endangerment still operate 

in Africa, just on a smaller scale. Minority language 

communities are slowly abandoning their mother 

tongues, especially in the countries with high numbers 

of languages, such as Nigeria, Cameroon, and the 

Democratic Republic of the Congo (over two hundred 

languages each), not for the internationally dominant 

European languages but for the local dominant native 

languages. 55 Because much of the economy of most 

African countries is still fairly regional, this process is 

moving more slowly than in many other parts of the 

world, but language endangerment is nevertheless 

still a problem in Africa. 56 

The region hit the hardest by language 

endangerment in recent years has been Asia and the 

Pacific. Asian countries contain over two thousand 

languages, about one-third of the world’s total; the 

Pacific region is not far behind with about thirteen 

hundred, or 19% of the world’s languages. 57 the 

high number of languages in Asia and the Pacific 

means that many of them have a small population of 

speakers, which makes them especially susceptible 

to language endangerment. One country that 

exemplifies this problem is Papua New Guinea. With 

eight hundred languages, Papua New Guinea is home 

to more languages than any other nation in the world. 

Linguists cite the long period of settlement in the area, 

the isolated terrain due to mountains and islands, 

and the historical lack of centralized government as 

reasons for the multitude of languages in Papua New 

Guinea. Most of the languages of Papua New Guinea, 

however, have fewer than one thousand speakers, 

the vast majority of whom are usually centered 

around a single village. Some of these languages have 

19 


only a handful of speakers, including Abaga with five, 

Guramalum with three, and Laua with just one. Thus, 

much of the language death expected over the next 

decades is predicted to occur to these languages in 

Papua New Guinea. 58 

Perhaps the most extreme case of language 

endangerment today is taking place in Australia. 

Linguists estimate that at the time of the British 

arrival in Australia at the end of the 18th century, the 

indigenous population spoke about 250 languages 

across the continent. Three-fifths of those languages 

have been completely eliminated, and another eighty 

or so will likely die very soon, as there are only older 

speakers left. These shocking numbers leave only 

twenty, or 8%, or the languages of Australia still viable 

today. Most of the language death in Australia has 

occurred because of the state policies toward the 

Aboriginal population over the past two hundred 

years, with numerous instances of forced relocation, 

lack of treatment for European diseases, and the 

murder of tribes of indigenous peoples. 59 

Overall, as the various figures intimate, the problem 

of language endangerment is real, severe, and 

worsening every year. Dominant European languages 

have been expanding throughout the Americas, 

Africa, and Asia and the Pacific and, in the process, 

have pulled speakers away from local indigenous 

languages. Today, linguists estimate that only 5% to 

10% of the world’s languages are completely safe from 

endangerment and extinction, with the rest either 

moribund or weakening. 60 Predictions vary widely for 

how rapidly language death is occurring; the lowest 

suggests that 25% of the world’s languages will be 

extinct within one hundred years, while the highest 

puts that number at 90%. Even if we take the standard 

projection that half of the world’s languages will die 

in the next one hundred years, this still amounts to 

the death of one language every two weeks. 61 

Should We Care About Language 

endangerment? 

Reasons Not To Support Language Revitalization Efforts 

While the discussion of language endangerment 

so far has suggested that this is a serious problem 

that must be addressed as soon as possible, there 

are a number of politicians, linguistics, and activists 

that do not believe that the international community 

should take significant action to revive endangered 

languages in the near future. the reasons that they 

cite range from religious arguments to economic 

considerations, and, as evident in the lack of a strong 

international response thus far, it is clear that many 

of these reasons have been persuasive. 

Some people cite religious arguments as reasons 

to not intervene in the process of language 

endangerment and death. those who hold this 

view are generally Christians, and their arguments 

rest on the stories of Genesis in the Old testament. 

According to the Bible, Adam named all of the 

animals and plants that he discovered in the Garden 

of Eden through the inspiration of God. Thus, before 

the fall of man and the birth of original sin, there 

was one “pure” language. Generations later, states 

the Bible, humans attempted to build a structure 

that would reach the heavens, termed the Tower of 

Babel; God considered the tower to be a show of 

excessive human pride, so he destroyed the tower, 

scattered the people across the face of the earth, and 

gave each group a different language so that they 

would be unable to communicate and replicate the 

Tower of Babel. 62 Because they believe that mankind 

spoke one language during the uncorrupted period 

of the Garden of eden and that the imposition of the 

diversity of languages was a curse for human pride, 

some Christians see the endangerment and death of 

languages as a positive step on the way to recreating 

this ideal part of human history. 63 interestingly, other 

religions see linguistic diversity as a positive aspect 

of humanity; in Islam, for example, the multitude 

20 


of languages is a sign of Allah’s work on earth, and 

for the Acoma tribe of New Mexico in the United 

States, the mother goddess Iatiku created so many 

languages to prevent the peoples of the world from 

quarreling. 64 thus, the religious arguments for noninterference 

in language endangerment are mainly 

found in Christianity. 

Another set of arguments against action to protect 

Some argue that for religious reasons the international community 

should not spend its resources on language revitalization. 

endangered languages is that the endangerment and 

death of the vast majority of the world’s languages are 

inevitable, regardless of any efforts the international 

community may take now, so it would be a waste 

of time, energy, and resources to try to do anything 

about it. Some people believe that, as the current 

trend is showing, multilingualism is just a temporary 

stage on the way to complete monolingualism and 

that all speakers will eventually settle on the single 

most useful language. Because globalization and 

urbanization are constantly limiting the number of 

“useful” languages left in the world, these forces 

will inevitably lead to the elimination of most of the 

world’s languages. Any attempts to reverse this 

trend would be futile in the long term. 65 A second 

line of related reasoning concerns the ability of 

individuals to learn their indigenous language. Given 

the complicated syntax and morphology of many 

of these languages, and the differences between 

them and the dominant languages, some think that 

it would be extremely difficult or impossible to teach 

the younger generations, who often have had no 

previous exposure, to speak the languages. 66 these 

two arguments against protecting endangered 

languages suggest that any efforts to revive such 

languages are doomed to fail from the start. 

A third, and perhaps the most common, set of 

arguments against protecting endangered languages 

rests on an economic rationale. The first economic 

argument is that it is not cost-effective to try to protect 

endangered languages. Even if it were possible to 

revive endangered languages, both private and 

public organizations do not have the monetary or 

physical resources to accommodate educational 

administrative systems and other services in all of 

these languages. Approximately 40% of the entire 

administrative budget of the European Union goes 

toward translation, 67 and the official recognition of 

all indigenous languages in countries like Papua New 

Guinea and Nigeria, with hundreds of languages each, 

would be crippling for the states’ budgets. The second 

argument in this category is that the decay of most 

minority languages occurs because speakers actively 

choose to abandon their mother tongue in the hope 

of opportunities for socioeconomic advancement. 

After a careful cost-benefit analysis over switching 

to a dominant language, many indigenous language 

speakers decide that the economic benefits of 

utilizing the dominant language outweigh the cultural 

legacy of the mother tongue. For this reason, many 

minority parents oppose education programs that 

attempt to incorporate the indigenous language into 

their children’s curriculum, as they want their children 

to obtain full fluency in the dominant language. 68 if 

many minority language speakers actively choose to 

abandon their mother tongue and oppose programs 

to reverse language endangerment, so many believe, 

21 


then it is unfair to force language revitalization efforts 

upon them. 

Reasons to Support Language Revitalization Efforts 

Despite several legitimate reasons to allow the 

natural process of language death to occur, many 

people, especially linguistics and minority rights 

activists, believe that the international community 

must act soon to prevent the large number of 

endangered languages from disappearing completely. 

the reasons to protect endangered languages range 

from academic to personal, and many consider them 

to trump the inevitability and economic arguments 

given above for inaction. 

From the perspective of those that study language, 

the existence of language diversity is vital for the 

future of the discipline of linguistics. The prevailing 

theory of language over the past fifty years posits that 

all humans are born with a basic linguistic function, 

called Universal Grammar, and that the differences 

between languages are the results of parameters that 

affect which structures and forms are permitted in 

each language. in order to understand what is allowed 

and disallowed in Universal Grammar and what the 

various parameters are, linguistics need to study 

many different languages. 69 Some languages overtly 

show linguistic phenomenon that have only been 

observed covertly in other languages, including the 

existence of movement and functional categories. 70 

The easiest way to observe this is through phonology. 

English possesses about twenty-four consonant 

phonemes (sounds) and between fifteen and twenty 

vowel phonemes, depending on the dialect (note 

that this is not referring to letters of the alphabet, 

as each letter and combination of letters can have 

multiple phonetic realizations). If linguists only 

studied English, we would think that these were the 

only possible sounds in human language. We would 

never know, for example, about the click consonants 

that are present in the Khosian language family of 

Africa, or about the fifty-five additional constant 

phonemes present in Ubykh, a language with eighty 

consonants and only two vowels that was spoken in 

the Caucasus region of central Asia. 71 The last speaker 

of Ubykh passed away on 7 October 1992 in Turkey, 

but fortunately, linguists were able to document the 

language before his death. 72 As shown in this example, 

smaller languages are often more useful for linguistic 

research because they have not been fully analyzed 

before and because, unlike the dominant European 

languages, they have usually not been significantly 

altered through contact. To make the importance 

of endangered languages to linguists even more 

salient, one author cites this fact: if language death 

continues as projected, linguists will preside over the 

disappearance of 90% of the entities that they are 

meant to study, an unprecedented statistic in the 

history of science and human knowledge. 73 

the study of the languages of the world also has 

benefits outside of linguistics. For historians, for 

example, analyzing the etymology of words and 

syntactic forms can reveal contact between various 

societies that may have occurred centuries ago; 

since many language communities lack formalized 

histories, the study of historical linguistics is one of 

the few ways to learn about the wars, conquests, 

and merging of societies over the past millennium. 74 

thus, the death of a language in some cases also 

means the death of the language community’s 

history. The preservation of endangered languages 

also ensures that each community will continue to 

have their myths and stories, both for the sake of 

the speakers themselves and for anthropologists 

to be able to study them. No languages have been 

discovered that do not have a collection of myths and 

stories, even if they are not as well-known globally as 

the works of the great authors of the Latin, Greek, 

and english traditions. 75 If these works are written 

down, it may be possible, albeit more difficult, for 

22 


There are over 100 sounds in human languages, many of which would be undiscovered if not for the study of small languages. 

23 


them to be studied after the relevant language has 

died. But, since many endangered languages do 

not have a writing system, their canons are at risk 

of being lost forever. 76 Finally, the endangerment 

of languages also threatens the work of natural 

scientists. Many indigenous cultures, particularly 

in the regions with the highest level of biodiversity, 

have a unique knowledge of the local climate and 

flora and fauna, and this knowledge is encoded in 

their language. A uNeSCO study of the language of 

the Anuesha people of the Peruvian Amazon, which 

is severely endangered, for example, revealed a 

number of terms for plants that had previously not 

been recorded and studied. 77 Some claim that the 

loss of local knowledge is not caused by language 

endangerment but by the devaluation and erosion of 

indigenous cultures. 78 Since this sociopolitical force 

is also a cause of language endangerment, however, 

it is clear that the abandonment of local language 

and the loss of indigenous knowledge of nature are 

related. thus, without the protection of endangered 

languages, numerous academic disciplines will be 

hurt, and the history and knowledge of indigenous 

populations will be lost forever. 

Perhaps the strongest, and also most controversial, 

motivation for action to protect endangered 

languages is the claim of an inherent connection 

between language and culture. While everyone 

concedes that there is a link between language and 

culture, the nature of this connection is controversial. 

Some anthropologists take an extreme view of 

this relationship, claiming that different languages 

represent different ways of looking at the world, or 

worldviews. This idea is a modern adaptation of the 

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as linguistic 

relativity, which maintains that the structure and 

lexicon of a language affect the way that its speakers 

perceive the world. Whorf’s most famous example 

for linguistic relativity was his understanding of the 

ways of speaking about time in Hopi, an indigenous 

language of the American Southwest. He believed that 

the Hopi people had a different conception of time 

than English speakers because the Hopi language did 

not have words for distinct units of time, like English’s 

“day” and “year.” A few experiments have shown 

linguistic relativity to be applicable to certain ideas, 

like shape and color; in one, researchers provided 

evidence that speakers of Yucatec, a language that 

refers to concrete nouns by units of their material, 

were more likely to pay attention to objects’ materials 

than forms, in contrast to speakers of English, which 

makes the form of the object more salient than its 

material. 79 Overall, however, linguistic relativity has 

been essentially disproven over the past fifty years, 

with no experimental evidence showing significant 

differences in the conceptions of numbers and time 

among speakers of various languages. 80 

Some activists, linguists, and anthropologists rely 

on a variation of linguistic relativity as an argument for 

protecting endangered languages. they argue that 

language death suppresses the distinct worldviews 

that different cultures possess. As linguistic relativity 

has been largely discredited, however, most 

defenders of indigenous languages rely on the reverse 

connection between language and culture, that a 

society’s language is vital for the full representation 

of its culture. Joshua Fishman goes as far as saying of 

the language-culture connection: “Such a huge part 

of every ethnoculture is linguistically expressed that it 

is not wrong to say that most ethnocultural behaviors 

would be impossible without their expression via the 

particular language with which these behaviors have 

been traditionally associated.” 81 While this position 

may be too extreme, it explicates the intrinsic value 

that indigenous languages have for the maintenance 

of the culture of their speakers. Starting with the 

most observable link, each language has its own 

set of myths, literature, songs and poetry, as stated 

24 


above. 82 While these works can be read in translation, 

it is clear that one loses some aspects of the author’s 

original intent in a foreign language; in order to fully 

understand the cultural significance of these works, 

it is necessary to maintain them in their original 

languages. 83 Languages also encode what their 

respective cultures know or value about a number 

of other aspects of society, including religion, justice, 

education, kinship, medicine, and nature, collectively 

known as intangible cultural heritage. 84 As much of 

this heritage is inherited through language, language 

death and endangerment has the risk of eliminating 

countless indigenous cultures. 85 While a few cultures 

have survived language endangerment, most notably 

those of the irish and Jewish peoples86 , the threat of 

language death to local cultures is undeniably strong. 

Possible Solutions 

Although the situation is grim for many endangered 

languages, there are a number of steps the 

international community can take to prevent these 

languages from becoming extinct. The undeniable 

first step is to increase information-gathering efforts 

about the status of endangered and non-endangered 

languages across the world. the Ethnologue 

represents a positive start in this direction, but much 

more information is needed before informed policy 

decisions can be made, including the age of speakers, 

the attitudes of speakers toward their mother tongue, 

and the specific causes of language endangerment 

in each case. 87 Additionally, by maintaining a 

core set of speakers over the past century, some 

languages appear immune to the forces of language 

endangerment, and it is vital to understand what has 

prevented the decay of these respective languages. 88 

Beyond this type of information gathering, there 

are two main categories of solutions to the problem 

of language endangerment: documentation and 

revitalization. These two categories can be applied 

separately or together, depending on how seriously 

endangered a language is, its prognosis for survival, 

and the priorities of those funding the efforts are. 

in cases of extreme language endangerment, 

the primary goal is usually documentation so 

that linguists can study the language, and future 

generations can have access, through translation, to 

their culture’s oral traditions. When a language is less 

seriously endangered, and more funding is available, 

the community might initiate revitalization efforts to 

rebuild a strong base of speakers. 

Documentation, also known as corpus planning, 

aims to ensure that a language persists in records 

after the death of the last speaker. These efforts 

usually involve the codification of the language 

in a standard form and the development of an 

orthography, or written form, if such a system does 

not already exist. documentation also includes 

the production of dictionaries and other types of 

written and oral archives. 89 in recent years, these 

archives have been undergoing a slow transition 

to the internet, which has made them much more 

easily accessible to the general population. On 21 

June 2012, Google announced that it was launching 

the Endangered Languages Project with a number of 

organizations involved in language preservation in 

order to collect online samples of the thousands of 

dying languages across the world. 90 In one remarkable 

case involving a digital archive, a group of speakers of 

Arapesh, an endangered language on the northern 

coast of Papua New Guinea, found an archive of their 

language through Facebook and have since reached 

out to the linguist responsible for assistance with 

their revitalization efforts. 91 this example reinforces 

the importance that linguists play in documentation 

efforts and shows that documentation can in itself be 

a method of revitalization, as indigenous populations 

often do not attempt to maintain their language until 

the work of linguists makes them understand the 

value of their own tongue. 92 

25 


Revitalization efforts can take a number of different 

One way to save a dying language is to send linguists to document 

and record the language, so it will live past the death of its last 

speaker. 

forms, but they all seek to combat one of the many 

causes of language endangerment, whether it be 

the attitude of the population toward the language 

or the lack of official domains in which the language 

is used. The most common revitalization efforts 

are in education. Language-in-education planning 

efforts aim to increase the number of speakers of 

an endangered language by holding classes for 

children and adults. The most effective, but also most 

complicated and expensive, educational initiatives 

involve the insertion of an indigenous language in the 

general education of children; this can take the form 

of a bilingual program or even complete language 

immersion. One of the most successful educational 

initiatives has been the implementation of “language 

nests,” which began with the Hawaiians and the 

Maori of New Zealand and have since spread across 

the world. In a language nest, old and retired speakers 

of the endangered language run a preschool that 

operates completely in the indigenous language, a 

system that allows the language to skip a generation 

of parents that may not have acquired it. 93 

Revitalization efforts can also aim to increase 

the prestige of an indigenous language, as negative 

attitudes toward a language can be a major cause of 

endangerment. One way of increasing a language’s 

prestige is to secure official recognition from 

governments and intergovernmental organizations. 

Many endangered languages would benefit greatly 

from official recognition, which would allow the 

language to be used in more public domains 

and would lead to greater funding for language 

revitalization efforts. 94 Official recognition would also 

lead speakers and nonspeakers to think more highly 

of the language in comparison to others. 95 Such 

recognition can come in the form of increased political 

autonomy. In 1979, for example, when Greenland was 

granted home rule by Denmark, Greenlandic was an 

endangered language; it is now considered one of the 

only safe indigenous languages in North America. 96 in 

addition, increasing the economic prosperity of the 

speaking population and giving the population more 

employment opportunities in its mother tongue 

would likely help save an endangered language by 

increasing speakers’ regard for their own language, 

prevent them from switching to a dominant language 

for professional reasons, and provide resources for 

language protection programs. Such an effect is 

evident in the Ayas Valley of northern Italy, where 

the change from an agriculture to tourism-based 

economy has provided the impetus and the funds for 

a trilingual education program in Italian, French, and 

the endangered Franco-provençal dialect. 97 

Even if a language has lost all of its speakers 

and is considered dead, it may still be possible to 

revive it. Assuming that the language has some 

documentation, linguists and activists can use these 

written materials to teach themselves, and others, 

the dead language. One prominent example of this 

language reclamation is the Wampanoag language 

of New England in the United States. The last native 

speakers of Wampanoag died in the mid 19th century, 

and the language was lost for over six generations. In 

1993, a member of the tribe founded the Wampanoag 

Language Reclamation Project, and in the past twenty 

26 


years, she has used records from the 17 th century to 

write a dictionary, develop educational materials, 

and run adult language classes. 98 this example shows 

that language reclamation is possible with significant 

effort and also underscores the importance of 

creating an orthography and maintaining written 

documentation of endangered languages, in case 

they do become extinct. 

Past international Action 

The issue of language endangerment first caught 

the attention of the international community in 

the early 1990s with the 15th international Congress 

of Linguists in 1992. The gathering of linguistic 

experts from around the world to discuss the fate of 

endangered languages marked the first time that this 

problem had been the topic of a major international 

gathering. The final report of the 15th international 

Congress of Linguists called upon the United Nations 

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 

(UNESCO), a specialized agency of the UN, to initiate 

a documentation campaign to record the grammars, 

texts, and oral histories of the endangered languages 

of the world. 99 uNeSCO did, in fact, respond to the 

appeal from the International Congress of Linguists, 

and the following year, the organization officially 

made endangered languages one of its priority issues 

and founded the Red Book of Endangered Languages, 

a compilation of information on the thousands of 

endangered and dying languages across the globe. 

The International Clearing House of Endangered 

Languages was founded at the University of Tokyo 

in 1995 to coordinate the research and publication of 

the Red Book. the Red Book has since been replaced 

by the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, which 

continues to be published to this day. 100 

Outside of this action by UNESCO, however, the 

United Nations has been rather silent on the issue of 

endangered languages. uNeSCO has assisted local 

activists and organizations in efforts to revitalize 

endangered languages, but it has not made any 

meaning for declarations of what must be done to 

secure the futures of dying languages. Most of the 

relevant UN resolutions on the topic have been about 

minority rights or cultural diversity more generally, 

and not specifically about endangered languages. In 

1992, the General Assembly passed the Declaration 

on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or 

Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. The first 

article of this resolution declares that “states shall 

protect the…linguistic identity…of minorities within 

their respective territories.” 101 Articles Two and Four 

go on to assert the rights of indigenous language 

speakers to learn their mother tongue, use it in the 

public and private sphere without discrimination, and 

receive education in the language. 102 the Action Plan 

of the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural 

Diversity calls upon nations to protect linguistic 

heritage, to support the production and dissemination 

of culture in as many languages as possible, and to 

encourage linguistic diversity in education and on the 

internet. 103 uNeSCO also indirectly called upon nations 

to support endangered languages by calling language 

“the vehicle of intangible cultural heritage” in the 

2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible 

Cultural Heritage and by emphasizing the importance 

of linguistic diversity in cultural diversity in the 2005 

Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the 

104 ,105 

Diversity of Cultural Expressions. 

While the United Nations has been inactive on the 

issue of language endangerment and language rights 

more generally, a community of activists has not. In 

1996, at the World Conference on Linguistic Rights 

in Barcelona, a group of writers, linguistics, and 

anthropologists adopted the Universal Declaration 

on Linguistic Rights, also known as the Barcelona 

declaration. the Barcelona declaration was drafted 

in response to the ever-increasing number of 

endangered languages across the world and the lack 

27 


of protections for those languages and their speakers. 

It recognizes the causes of language endangerment 

discussed above, including conquest and invasion, 

hostile state policies, and economic factors. it also 

acknowledges the benefits of preserving endangered 

languages, including their importance for identity, 

culture, and communication. the Barcelona 

declaration calls on states to implement protections 

for minority language speakers to use their mother 

tongue in all aspects of public life, including the justice 

system, government administrative, education, and 

the economic marketplace. It also emphasizes both 

individual and collective rights to use any language 

in the private sphere and to maintain a culture via 

language. The document acknowledges the economic 

factors that go into a speaker’s decision to abandon 

their indigenous language but encourages states 

to facilitate the integration, with a maintenance 

of culture, of minority language speakers into the 

dominant community, instead of their assimilation. 106 

Although the Barcelona declaration was presented 

to UNESCO, it has not been adopted in any formal 

manner by the organization and thus has no legal 

standing; it may, however, provide the committee 

with ideas about measures to take to protect 

endangered languages in the future. 

Questions a Resolution Must Answer 

(QARMA) 

1. Should the protection of endangered 

2. 

languages even be of significant importance 

for the Social, Cultural and Humanitarian 

committee in the first place? 

Given the urgency of the situation and the 

difficulty of stopping the forces of language 

endangerment, should the primary focus 

be on language documentation or language 

revitalization? 

3. What measures can the international 

community take to encourage indigenous 

populations to maintain their language in 

the face of discrimination and globalizing 

economic forces? Can the causes of language 

endangerment be combatted to prevent 

languages from decay? 

4. Who should take the lead in protecting 

endangered languages: states, 

nongovernmental organizations, or local 

5. 

activists? How should the efforts be distributed 

between these different groups? 

How can the Social, Cultural and Humanitarian 

committee ensure the protection of 

endangered languages in international 

resolutions, declarations, and covenants? 

Key Actors and Positions 

the three sets of players that are most important for 

the future of endangered languages are indigenous 

populations, non-governmental organizations 

(NGOs) that work to protect endangered languages, 

and state governments. All three groups must work 

together to ensure that measures to document and 

revitalize endangered languages are implemented 

successfully. Without the support of the language 

community, for example, it is impossible to collect 

data for archives and to implement education courses. 

Without the involvement of NGOs, documentation 

and revitalization plans will lack the expertise to be 

effective. Finally, without the backing of governments, 

NGOs will lack the funding required to enact these 

programs and will be powerless against prevailing 

discriminatory attitudes. thus, any solution to the 

problem of language endangerment must involve a 

collaboration among indigenous peoples, NGOs, and 

governments. 

There are a few nongovernmental organizations 

that are especially active in the fight to save 

endangered languages, including Google’s 

Endangered Language Project, which is being 

operated by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council and the 

28 


Institute for Language Information and Technology 

at Eastern Michigan University. The most prominent 

NGO is the SIL, a nonprofit that publishes Ethnologue: 

Languages of the World, the encyclopedia from where 

much of the data in this background guide comes. 

The SIL is a faith-based organization whose goal is 

to document and revitalize endangered languages 

across the world. Founded in 1934, the SIL now has 

a staff of over five thousand and is currently studying 

almost three thousand different languages. 107 

the positions that your countries hold with regard 

to the protection of language endangerment are not 

easily divisible along regional lines. Governments will 

instead follow the official or unofficial linguistic policy 

that they hold for the languages within their borders. 

Many nations, including the united States and 

much of Europe, have strict unilingual policies, only 

recognizing one official language; while these nations 

would not necessarily oppose language revitalization 

efforts, they would be unlikely to support a set of 

solutions that involve the recognition of endangered 

languages on a national level. Countries with multiple 

official languages, like much of Africa and Asia, would 

be more eager to propose solutions that involve the 

national recognition of endangered languages. Some 

countries have primary or secondary education in 

certain indigenous languages, whereas others only 

teach in the dominant language; while the former 

would be in favor of increased minority language 

education, the latter may not. 

Another factor that will determine your country’s 

position on the protection of endangered languages 

is the number and conditions of dying languages 

within its borders. A country like Australia, for 

example, which has a few languages that are critically 

endangered and has historically made no effort to 

protect those languages, would most likely be eager 

to institute programs to document fully and revitalize 

its dying languages, because it would be manageable 

given the number of languages remaining and 

would show the government’s commitment to 

the indigenous population. A country like Nigeria, 

however, may be less inclined to support endangered 

languages initiatives because there are so many 

indigenous languages that it would have to protect. 

Furthermore, faced with a high level of poverty and 

low levels of education, the Nigerian government 

may not want to spend its valuable resources on such 

programs. 

Finally, your nation’s policy must consider benefits 

that your country would experience from endangered 

language protection initiatives. A country that already 

has a strong tourism industry due to its dominant 

culture or natural resources, like the United States, 

would not gain much in terms of culture and tourism 

from protecting its indigenous languages; a nation 

with less tourism, like many Pacific Islands, may 

gain international recognition for its unique cultures 

and more foreign visitors if it chooses to protect 

its endangered languages. When developing your 

country’s policy on language endangerment, it is 

important to take all of these different factors into 

consideration. Just because your country has a strict 

unilingual policy, for example, does not necessarily 

mean that you should oppose all protections for 

endangered languages. A country with a thriving 

travel industry may support tourism as a method of 

endangered languages protection, even if it does 

not wish to see such measures instituted within 

its borders. The possible solutions for the problem 

of endangered languages are so broad that the 

question is not whether or not your country supports 

documentation and revitalization but which specific 

policies you think should be enacted. 

Suggestions for Further Research 

As a starting point, i would encourage you to do some 

research on the problem of language endangerment 

in general. UNESCO has a good overview of the 

29 


topic, as well as links to current efforts to revitalize 

and document endangered languages. the American 

National Science Foundation also has an informative 

description of language endangerment. in addition, 

there are a number of small nonprofit organizations 

that are dedicated to the preservation of endangered 

languages, and a quick study of their websites should 

give you more information on the problem, as well as 

new and creative solutions to revitalize or document 

languages. Most of the information on endangered 

is fairly decentralized, so I hope that you will take 

the time to search around the internet for as many 

different perspectives as possible. 

Secondly, the best way to gain a sense of the 

severity of the problem and to better understand the 

issues involved is to research a number of different 

endangered languages. There are a number of digital 

archives that have information on the wide variety 

of the three thousand or so endangered languages 

across the world. the entire Ethnologue is available 

online at www.ethnologue.com, and it contains facts 

about most of the world’s languages, in addition to 

statistics about geographical distribution and number 

of speakers. Google’s Endangered Languages Project 

can be found at www.endangeredlanguages.com and 

has information and samples from many endangered 

languages. From these databases and from the case 

studies in any book on the topic, you will learn about 

the diverse situations that endangered languages 

face and learn how to craft solutions to benefit as 

many of them as possible. Additionally, if you are a 

speaker of an endangered language, I encourage you 

to submit a sample to the Endangered Languages 

Project! 

Topic Area B 


The world has seen an unprecedented level of 

economic growth in modern times that has led to 

significant increases in the standard of living of much 

of the global population. Incomes in much of the 

developed world, for example, have increased by a 

factor of twelve in the past 150 years. In developing 

nations, improvements in human development 

indices, including life expectancy and infant and 

maternal mortality, have occurred even faster than 

they did during the European Industrial Revolution, 

which is commonly regarded as the historic standard 

for rapid economic growth. 108 That being said, this 

unprecedented growth has not affected the world’s 

population evenly. While most of the developed 

world and the elites in third world countries have seen 

their standards of living rise consistently, this growth 

has been much less drastic for many marginalized 

populations. Perhaps the most marginalized of the 

world’s minorities are indigenous peoples, and they 

constitute a huge portion of the world’s poor; a new 

World Bank study states that although indigenous 

peoples make up only five percent of the global 

population, they are fifteen percent of all those living 

in poverty. 109 

Many indigenous economic activities are threatened in the 

modern, globalized economy, which leaves impoverished and 

helpless indigenous populations. 

Beyond the simple need to improve the lot of the 

world’s peoples, there are a number of reasons why 

the international community should look to aid the 

30 


economic development of indigenous peoples. The 

existence of poor communities, especially those that 

are marginalized, is correlated with a general weak 

rule of law and distrust in government institutions, 

which is manifested through increased crime rates 

and non-utilization of government services. High 

levels of indigenous poverty also lead to larger slum 

populations. Additionally, as would be expected, 

significant populations of impoverished indigenous 

peoples can stagnate the overall economic growth of 

a nation. When indigenous peoples are not connected 

to the majority economy, unemployment rates are 

higher, and there is less overall market trade. Poverty 

is also associated with worse indicators in other areas 

of development, including life expectancy, child and 

maternal mortality, and education attainment. 110 

While it is well-known that increases in these other 

areas of development can lead to a reduction in 

poverty levels, increasing economic development 

can contribute to improvements in these aspects of 

overall development as well. 111 Tackling the problem 

of indigenous poverty is therefore vital for all of the 

developmental goals of the international community. 

the international community has already 

recognized the importance of economic development 

for the entire global population. The Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights, the document that 

began the modern human rights movement, protects 

the right to economic development in Article 25 (1), 

which reads as follows: 

“Everyone has the right to a standard 

of living adequate for the health and 

well-being of himself and of his family, 

including food, clothing, housing and 

medical care and necessary social 

services, and the right to security 

in the event of unemployment, 

sickness, disability, widowhood, 

old age or other lack of livelihood in 

circumstances beyond his control.” 112 

The right to development is without a doubt one 

of the most pressing and urgent rights listed in 

the Universal Declaration, as many of the other 

goals, including universal access to education and 

participation in government, are unachievable if 

a certain basic standard of living is not reached. As 

stated above, the international community has come 

far in the way of improving economic conditions 

for much of the global population. Because much 

of the population that remains in poverty today 

is indigenous, however, the challenges impeding 

further economic development and the solutions to 

those challenges are different than those previously 

encountered. 

Between 6 and 8 September 2000, leaders from 

almost every nation of the world convened in New 

York at the Millennium Summit to discuss the role 

of the united Nations in the 21st century. the most 

well-known, if not most important, outcome of 

the Millennium Summit was the drafting of the 

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of 

eight development targets for improving the lives 

of peoples across the world. The MDGs are specific 

targets that range from combatting HIV/AIDS 

and other diseases to achieving universal primary 

education. Here we will be focusing on the first MDG, 

eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. The specific 

targets for the first MDG are as follows: halving the 

proportion of people living on less than $1 a day; 

achieving decent employment for women, men, and 

young people; and halving the proportion of people 

who suffer from hunger. 113 

One of the difficulties in assessing the progress of 

economic development among indigenous peoples 

is the lack of standard definitions for “indigenous 

peoples” and “poverty.” The United Nations has 

refrained in recent years from defining what makes a 

group of people “indigenous,” even in the Declaration 

31 


on the Rights of indigenous Peoples, in order to 

ensure that certain populations are not excluded. in its 

landmark convention on the topic, the International 

Labour Organization defines “indigenous peoples” 

as those that are descended from a population that 

inhabited a given region at the time of conquest or 

colonization. 114 Others define the term more broadly 

to include any marginalized population that has strong 

ties to native lands, practices subsistence agriculture, 

and/or possesses a unique culture, language, or social 

and political structure. Not all minority populations 

are indigenous, but most indigenous peoples are a 

minority in their respective states. 

Causes of Minority Poverty 

In their book on minority development in China, 

Bhalla and Qiu provide a relatively uncontroversial 

definition of poverty: “a social phenomenon 

under which the standard of living of individuals 

and households in a community or a country is 

persistently below a certain level required physically 

for sustaining human life according to some accepted 

norms.” 115 More important than a compact definition 

are the indicators of poverty, which include low 

income and consumption levels; the inability to 

receive adequate shelter, education, and heath care; 

and lack of access to employment opportunities. 116 

A distinction must be made, however, between 

absolute and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is a 

circumstance in which an individual does not have 

access to a basic level of resources necessary to live. 

Indicators of absolute poverty include starvation 

and malnutrition; poor health due to diet and lack 

of hygiene; and no attainment of any education. 117 

Relative poverty is a situation in which an individual 

has the resources to survive but not in a way that 

matches the standards of society in terms of diet, 

education, and employment. It is vital to utilize these 

different definitions of poverty when discussing and 

attempting to solve indigenous impoverishment in 

various regions. In much of the developed world for 

example, essentially none of the population lives in 

absolute poverty; these countries must make efforts 

to bring its citizens out of relative poverty. In the 

developing world, a significant percentage of the 

population lives in absolute poverty, so the primary 

focus there should be to increase access to basic 

nutrition, employment, and shelter. 118 

Liberalization of Trade 

One of the most notable causes of the 

impoverishment of indigenous peoples over the past 

decades has been the push toward the liberalization 

of international trade. This problem encompasses two 

trends that are intrinsically intertwined: the expansion 

of transnational corporations into indigenous lands 

and the declining viability of local indigenous means 

of subsistence. For centuries, indigenous populations 

have utilized this land for their own (primarily 

agricultural) practices with little-to-no interference 

from outside entities. Recently, however, laws have 

permitted transitional corporations, often with the 

blessing of national governments, to enter indigenous 

lands with the purpose of extracting natural resources 

like oil, gas, and minerals. With the development 

of large-scale resource extraction equipment, local 

agricultural techniques are no longer viable, leaving 

these indigenous communities with little food and no 

chance for employment. 

The liberalization of international trade has 

negatively impacted the prosperity of indigenous 

populations through the direct competition of largescale 

agricultural production. The primary driver of 

this change was the 1995 World Trade Organization 

Agreement on Agriculture (WtO Agreement on 

Agriculture). While the details are not particularly 

relevant to this discussion, one of the goals of the 

WtO Agreement on Agriculture was to encourage 

export competition and import liberalization through 

reductions of import and export tariffs. 119 the World 

32 


Trade Organization (WTO) suggested these actions 

as a means of increasing free trade globally, which 

would lead to substantial economic growth in the long 

term. This logic, however, did not take into account 

the negative impact that the WTO Agreement on 

Agriculture would bear for on indigenous populations. 

This impact has two distinct manifestations. The first 

is the flooding of international markets with large 

volumes of agricultural crops from the developed 

industries of a small number of countries, which 

drives down prices on these products for all countries. 

Without any tariff protections and exposed to the 

free market, indigenous farmers who grow the same 

crops are unable to make a suitable living with their 

traditional techniques. Because they do not have 

the resources to compete with the large agricultural 

companies in developed countries, they are also 

unable to adapt to more modern methods of farming. 

One of the primary producers of agricultural products 

for the past century has been the United States, and 

its companies have inadvertently destroyed many 

indigenous industries, notably Mexico’s corn industry 

and the coffee industries of other Latin American 

countries like Brazil, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. 120 

Effects on local agriculture also occur when 

transnational companies move onto local lands 

to increase their production capabilities. The 

transnational companies sign agreements with 

governments to convert “unused” land into 

plantations that produce huge amounts of cash crops. 121 

these lands are often not actually unused, of course, 

but are rather employed by indigenous populations 

for small-scale farming. A common view held by many 

majority populations and the governments that they 

inevitably control is that such small-scale agriculture 

does not contribute to economic growth and that 

in order to increase growth they have to turn the 

land over to foreign companies that will generate 

profits. Even though many indigenous agricultural 

practices are environmentally sustainable, the 

majority population sees them as outdated and 

unproductive. 122 Worse still, the crops grown by these 

foreign companies are almost always exclusively 

bound for international destinations, so they do 

not even help feed the indigenous populations that 

were pushed off of the land. Thus, through the direct 

intervention of transnational agricultural companies 

into local farming lands, indigenous peoples lose their 

livelihoods and find themselves in extreme poverty. 

One specific indigenous system that majority 

populations and governments often disrespect and 

ignore is pastoralism. Pastoralism is a method of 

raising livestock on lands that are not very good for 

agriculture by constantly moving the animals onto 

new territory in search of grazing areas and water. 

Approximately 25% of the world’s land coverage is 

currently used for pastoralism, which accounts for 

10% of the world’s meat production and well over 

50% of the agricultural gross domestic products of 

many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa. 123 Pastoralism is 

therefore vital for the economy of Africa and is used 

by indigenous populations throughout the continent, 

including the Tuareg camel breeders in the Sahara, 

the Maasai cattle breeders of Eastern Africa, and the 

Fulani cattle breeders of the West African savannah. 124 

Pastoralism is thus an extremely common farming 

practice, usually employed by indigenous peoples. 

Historically, colonial governments considered 

pastoral lands to be unoccupied, and many postcolonial 

governments have since taken control 

of these territories from indigenous populations 

for sedentary agriculture, resource extraction, or 

infrastructural projects. The governments take this 

action even though pastoralism is an extremely 

environmentally sustainable practice and is one 

of the most effective ways of utilizing drylands. 125 

Recent years have seen an increase in expulsions of 

indigenous populations from pastoral lands in Sub- 

33 


Saharan Africa. On her website, for example, Janet 

Museveni, the First Lady of Uganda and the national 

minister for the Karamoja region, calls upon pastoral 

Advanced farming equipment has allowed the agricultural 

industry of certain developed nations to flourish at the expensive 

of indigenous ways of life. 

farmers to settle their livestock on one location and 

begin practicing sedentary agriculture. 126 

One of the regional industries in which the 

liberalization of trade has had the most effect 

is mining in Africa. Many African countries have 

liberalized their mining laws over the past thirty years 

to encourage foreign investment, in the hopes that 

this will help boost their economic growth and overall 

gross domestic product (GDP), a primary measure of 

economic development. In response, many British, 

American, Canadian, and Australian companies 

have established operations on these previously 

untouched lands with little regard for the indigenous 

populations that live and farm there. The presence 

of these transnational companies is so extensive 

that over 2,600 bilateral agreements had been 

signed between African governments and foreign 

mining companies by 2008. 127 As may be expected, 

these transnational mining companies generally do 

not take environmental factors into consideration 

when building their infrastructure and implementing 

their extractive techniques, which further harms 

the situation in which indigenous populations 

find themselves. In Africa, the most common 

environmental impact is the dissemination of toxic 

chemicals in the water supply, which has ruined crops 

and farming land and has caused dangerous illnesses 

and problems with pregnancies and childbirth. 128 

Because they are no longer able to practice their 

traditional farming techniques, which are usually 

relatively sustainable, indigenous peoples are often 

forced to employ other, less environmentally-friendly 

methods; this worsens the situation and leaves them 

with no means of subsistence or employment. This 

pattern is not only evident in the African mining 

industry but is also observed in Indonesia’s nickel 

industry and the Amazonian natural gas industry. 129 

Disregard for Indigenous Land Rights 

Another cause of the impoverishment of indigenous 

populations is the disregard for local land rights, an 

issue that is closely connected to the liberalization of 

trade regulations. As alluded to above, in the process 

of creating the infrastructure for massive agricultural 

or resource extraction industries in a developing 

country, many governments and transnational 

corporations either explicitly or implicitly expel the 

indigenous residents from their land. in many Asian 

and African nations, indigenous peoples have no title 

to the land on which they reside, and the government 

has the complete authority to distribute that land 

to members of the country’s ethnic majority or to 

domestic or foreign companies. 130 When their land 

is taken away, most indigenous peoples lose their 

traditional methods of subsistence and are either 

forced to live in extreme poverty or migrate to a 

city for employment, another problem that will be 

discussed. 

The problems with the legal frameworks for 

indigenous land rights are numerous. Many 

countries simply do not have such laws in the first 

place, so indigenous populations have no authority 

34 


over the land that they have lived on for centuries. 

Another problem is the failure to consult indigenous 

communities when developing land rights policies. 

Many indigenous communities have their own 

local land practices that policymakers completely 

disregard in the drafting of their frameworks for land 

rights. The Samburu of Kenya, for example, use the 

Lkiama system, which their ancestors developed 

centuries ago. The Lkiama system states that all 

tribal lands are collectively owned by the community 

and entrusts them to a group of elders, who then 

distribute them for use to the rest of the tribe. The 

Samburu also negotiate directly with other tribes for 

lands rights, outside of the jurisdiction of national 

laws. The Kenyan government, however, did not take 

the Lkiama system or these direct negotiations in 

account when developing its new land policy, which 

has led to dissention among the Samburu people. 

131 Further problems with legal frameworks for local 

land rights include overly complicated procedures 

for securing these land rights, imprecision in the 

definitions of who is entitled to local land rights, and 

conflict over ownership of natural resources within 

certain territories. 132 

Upon removing indigenous populations from 

ancestral lands, governments sometimes resettle 

them on lands entirely unfamiliar to the populations. 

For example, the Batwa people of Central Africa have 

traditionally lived in the forests of Rwanda, Uganda, 

Burundi, and the eastern part of the democratic 

Republic of the Congo. In past few decades, these 

governments have expelled the Batwa from their 

lands because they wished to either undertake a 

large infrastructural development program or form 

a national park or nature reserve on the territory. 

Currently, fewer than 10% of the Batwa still retain 

access to traditional forest lands while the rest 

have been resettled to villages on the periphery of 

mainstream society. 133 These resettled citizens cannot 

continue the forms of employment that they used to 

undertake in the forest, and discrimination from the 

majority ethnic group prevents them from obtaining 

meaningful work. Most end up working as labor on 

other people’s farms and have to borrow food in 

order to survive. This entraps the Batwa people in a 

cycle of debt from which they rarely escape. While 

the populations of these African nations are rapidly 

rising, the Batwa population is falling, most likely 

because of the extreme poverty they face and the 

subsequent lack of access to food and healthcare. 134 

The problem of indigenous populations losing their 

local land rights is not always forced upon them by 

national governments. In some instances, immediate 

economic pressures can encourage indigenous 

peoples to sell their plots to whomever is willing to pay, 

whether it be members of the majority population or a 

dominant company. The Olkaria Maasai population of 

Kenya, for example, live in Hell’s Gate National Park, 

where the Kenya electricity Generating Company 

(KenGen), a parastatal organization that produces 

the vast majority of the electricity consumed in the 

country, has been developing geothermal energy 

since before the founding of the park in 1984. After a 

long legal dispute, a Kenyan court ruled in 2009 that 

the Maasai had rights to the land but, ignoring the 

local land customs as discussed above, divided the 

land into plots owned by individual members of the 

Maasai tribe. While some have retained their land and 

resumed traditional agricultural practices, KenGen 

has bought out many others, paying them substantial 

amounts for their individual titles. This issue has 

brought significant intertribal violence and conflict to 

the region, as those that do not sell were angry with 

those that do. 135 Although it seems that the selling of 

individual titles benefits the economic situations of 

these Maasai, in the long run it will most likely leave 

them in a worse position, as most of them do not 

have the education or the skills for other occupations 

35 


Increased mining activity in Hell’s Gate National Park have slowly 

removed he Maasai of Kenya from their native lands. 

and are thus left unemployed without their plot of 

land to farm. 

disregard for indigenous land rights can occur 

even when the government is attempting to act in 

the best interest of the community. The highlands of 

northern Thailand, for example, contain significant 

indigenous populations, including the Akh and the 

Lisu, who farm rice, maize, and poppy via the slashand-burn 

technique, an agricultural method used in 

overpopulated and forested regions where there is 

not enough arable land. 136 In slash-and-burn farming, 

agricultural plots are created through the burning 

and cutting of all of vegetation in a certain area. 

Because of the indigenous slash-and-burn methods 

and significant logging activity, the forests of the 

highlands are severely damaged, so the Royal Forest 

Department, a body of the Thai government, has 

taken ownership of the land and begun a replanting 

campaign. 137 In the process of replanting, however, 

the Royal Forest Department has eliminated many 

farms that the Akh and Lisu were cultivating. None of 

the indigenous peoples are Thai citizens, which makes 

it extremely difficult for them to retake ownership 

of their land at any point. 138 Since their lands have 

been taken away, they have seen increased rates of 

extreme poverty, HIV/AIDS, and drug addiction. 139 

Without access to their traditional farming practices, 

which produced enough food for the population to 

live on, many Akh and Lisu have been forced to seek 

other forms of income, including local wage labor and 

jobs in the major cities of Thailand. 140 the conditions 

that these migrants live and work in, however, are not 

ideal, and, as discussed below, they face significant 

discrimination that makes it difficult for them to 

find other employment. Others have attempted to 

adopt sustainable agricultural practices to prevent 

the Thai government from taking away their land, 

but since the Thai government is instituting these 

changes so rapidly, it is unlikely that the adoption 

will be successful. 141 this example illustrates the 

challenges that the international community faces 

when attempting to assist indigenous populations, 

as the actions that benefit them sometimes have 

other negative consequences, which, in this case, are 

environmental. 

Another common example of good government 

intentions backfiring is the development of national 

parks and its accompanying tourist economy on 

indigenous lands. One such case concerns the 

Taroko, an indigenous people of Taiwan. Their 

territory encompasses the Taroko Gorge, a worldclass 

attraction that draws almost two million tourists 

annually. Since the founding of the Republic of China 

on Taiwan, the government has taken away much of 

their land for development projects. The largest land 

grab was in 1980, when the government created the 

Taroko National Park. Taroko residents were forced to 

relocate with limited reparations and were forbidden 

from practicing their local customs, including hunting, 

fishing, and slash-and-burn agriculture. 142 Many 

Taroko left for jobs in the city but found themselves 

unemployed with the cutback in industrialization and 

importation of foreign labor during the economic 

restructuring of the 1990s. Today, the government 

of the Republic of China is attempting to convince 

the Taroko to begin small businesses in the tourist 

36 


industry, like bed and breakfasts and restaurants, but 

the indigenous population is largely resistant. 143 When 

interviewed, they say that they are not interested in 

the market economy and just want enough food and 

money for their expenses; what are most important to 

the Taroko people are their land and their traditional 

lifestyles, which are unlikely to be returned to them in 

the near future. 144 

There are a number of indigenous organizations 

that have been fighting for local land rights, most 

notably those in Latin America. In the 1990s, 

indigenous rights non-governmental organizations 

(NGOs) throughout the region made significant 

attempts to map, demarcate, and title the lands of 

the indigenous populations. These efforts were fairly 

successful in certain parts of Colombia, Peru, and 

Brazil, but they ran into resistance in other countries, 

like Chile and Argentina. Unfortunately, even in the 

countries where these efforts had some success, the 

indigenous populations did not win full land rights. in 

many instances where these NGOs won indigenous 

titles to local lands, the territories that were granted 

to the indigenous peoples did not cover all of the land 

that they utilized for their economic activities, leaving 

many in the same situation in which they began. 

Additionally, armed conflict in some countries, most 

notably Colombia, has forced indigenous populations 

off of their lands, erasing any benefits they had won 

from gaining title to the land. 145 

Limited progress has also been made in certain 

countries in rectifying past disregard for indigenous 

land. A new land policy in uganda, for example, 

promises compensation for past and future land 

seizures, though the exact method and amount of 

compensation have yet to be determined. This new 

land policy also seeks to increase indigenous land 

ownership by simplifying the process for members of 

indigenous communities to apply to gain official title 

for the land. this land policy has not yet passed the 

Uganda legislature, however. 146 Nevertheless, this 

first step gives hope that governments in the future 

will take indigenous land rights into account when 

determining national policy. 

Some suggest that the international community 

should not focus on local land rights when seeking 

to improve the economic situation of indigenous 

peoples. Roger Riddell, for example, argues that 

so many indigenous people have already forsaken 

their ancestral lands and traditional occupations 

for urban life and employment and that our efforts 

should primarily attempt to help indigenous migrants 

in those urban locations. 147 The reason, however, 

that so many indigenous people have migrated to 

urban areas at an increasingly rapid pace is that they 

have been forced off of their ancestral lands or that, 

because of the global economy, they are unable to 

subsist on these lands alone. If the international 

community works to protect indigenous lands and 

make them viable for economic subsistence, then the 

problem of indigenous populations in urban areas will 

lessen. 

Lack of Indigenous Civic Participation 

One of the major problems that anthropologists 

and activists have discovered with previous failed 

attempts to assist the economic and human 

development of indigenous peoples is the lack of 

participation by indigenous peoples in the drafting 

and debate of plans that are intended to assist them. 

When indigenous populations are excluded from 

the development discussion, subsequent policies 

either fail to recognize their interests at all or initiate 

action that is harmful to them. Policies that promote 

general economic growth, which primarily affect 

the wealthy and the majority ethnic population, are 

different from those that assist the development 

of indigenous populations, but many poverty 

reduction strategies do not make this distinction 

and only involve plans to increase general growth. 148 

37 


Often, these general growth strategies, including 

privatization and trade liberalization, not only fail 

to help but actually adversely affect indigenous 

populations. Even if minority development strategies 

are included, they are often underfunded and 

ineffective. Without the participation of indigenous 

peoples in the development discussion, it will be 

difficult to prevent flawed policies from being 

enacted again in the future. indigenous peoples need 

to be included at all levels of the debate, including 

policy and program design, implementation, and 

evaluation. 149 Additionally, according to the World 

Bank, growth is more sustainable in countries where 

political power is more evenly distributed, a reason 

in itself to encourage indigenous participation in the 

development discussion. 150 

An example of the harm that can come from 

leaving indigenous peoples out of the development 

discussion is the 1997 Poverty Eradication Action Plan 

in uganda. this plan was touted as a proposal for 

reducing poverty among minority populations, but in 

reality, it had no effect on the dire circumstances that 

many indigenous people in the country still endure. 

The Poverty Eradication Action Plan called for the 

liberalization of trade, privatization of industries, 

low inflation, and a balancing of the budget. It also 

cut social programs that were targeted at poverty 

reduction, human development, and income 

distribution. The indigenous population relied on 

many of the eliminated programs for assistance, and 

the reduction in government spending and lowering 

of inflation prevented the development of new public 

or private initiatives to assist the indigenous groups. 

Overall, the Poverty Eradication Action Plan was a 

complete failure and exemplifies the importance 

of indigenous involvement in the discussion and 

development of any future poverty reduction plans. 151 

There are many factors that prevent indigenous 

populations from participating in development 

discussions. Their minority status may not be 

recognized by the national government in the first 

place, which makes any attempt to create special 

programs nearly impossible. 152 Many indigenous 

populations speak a small minority language instead 

of the official national language and thus cannot 

communicate with governmental officials. Further 

challenges include a lack of education among 

indigenous people, which prevents them from 

understanding the complex economic issues involved 

and from articulating their needs to others, and a lack 

of knowledge about government processes and their 

rights. 153 NGOs that represent indigenous peoples 

can provide a voice for these disenfranchised people, 

but these groups often have their own troubles, 

including limited funding for travel, translation, and 

information gathering. 154 

The international community has taken a step 

toward indigenous involvement in the development 

discussion with the establishment of the Poverty 

Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) by the World Bank 

and the International Monetary Fund. The PRSPs are 

documents that these two organizations require 

before they allocate any sort of development aid under 

the Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative, and they 

force developing countries to draft proposals for 

using the aid to reduce poverty within their borders. 155 

Thus, at a minimum the PRSPs encourage developing 

nations with significant indigenous communities 

to consider how to effectively bring economic 

development to the most remote regions. Many 

countries, however, have drafted PRSPs without 

considering the effects of their policies on indigenous 

peoples and have thereby ignored the plights of some 

of their poorest residents. 156Any effective solution to 

this problem necessitates the inclusion of indigenous 

peoples in developing countries’ PRSPs to support 

their participation in the creation of development 

policies. 

38 


Discrimination 

Of all of the factors that lead to extreme poverty 

like arson, rape, or murder. In the face of this violent 

discrimination, it is impossible for indigenous peoples 

among indigenous peoples, the most important may 

be the discrimination that they encounter from the 

ethnic majority population and the government. 157 

Such discrimination is especially relevant if the 

indigenous population has been evicted from 

their tribal lands and 

are forced to seek 

new employment 

opportunities outside 

of their traditional 

occupations. Many 

indigenous peoples 

have trouble securing 

jobs because members 

of the majority ethnic 

population own and 

operate most businesses 

and are averse to hiring 

indigenous labor. Many 

employers do not value 

indigenous knowledge and skills and instead see 

indigenous peoples as uneducated and backwards. 

Even when they can secure employment, indigenous 

people are almost always underpaid in comparison 

to non-minorities. An analysis of these earnings 

differentials globally shows that between 25% and 50% 

of the differences in pay can be account for as a result 

of discrimination. this distinction is especially acute 

for jobs that require higher levels of education. 158 in 

addition to employment, discrimination also prevents 

indigenous peoples from accessing educational 

opportunities and healthcare. 159 

to continue with their traditional livelihoods or with 

their attempts to establish new lives elsewhere. On 

the other hand, extreme poverty can also be the cause 

of violence and crime among indigenous populations. 

Without meaningful educational opportunities or 

employment, many 

indigenous youth 

commit violent acts or 

crimes in desperation. 

Thus, the problem with 

lawlessness is present 

on both sides; in order 

to bring indigenous 

people out of poverty, 

we must protect them 

from discriminatory 

crimes, but the poverty 

that discrimination 

causes among the same 

population leads them to 

commit their own crimes. 

In some circumstances, discrimination can take 

the form of violence and crime. Indigenous peoples 

sometimes find themselves subject to constant attacks 

from members of the majority ethnic population in the 

form of nonviolent harassment or more violent crimes 

160 It is impossible to provide 

developmental aid to areas with significant violence, 

an issue that has rendered many governments and 

civil society organizations inactive in the face of 

indigenous poverty. It is therefore urgent that the 

international community finds a way to stop this cycle 

of violence. 

Discrimination is most prevalent in urban 

environments in which indigenous peoples live 

side-by-side with members of the majority ethnic 

group and members of other minority populations. 

Indigenous peoples are often driven to cities by land 

dispossession and eviction and the search for new 

employment opportunities, as shown in many of the 

examples described above. Once in cities, however, 

indigenous peoples are often unable to find adequate 

employment or housing. 161 Upon moving to a city in search of employment, many indigenous 

peoples find themselves living in slums, such as the infamous Rochina 

slum in Rio de Janeiro. 

If they are lucky enough to 

39 


find a job, they are usually employed in unskilled and 

underpaid positions such as domestic or construction 

workers or small street vendors. Because of these 

low-paying jobs, indigenous populations in cities are 

dependent on social services from the government 

though many do not have access to these benefits for 

varied reasons. 

The lack of adequate housing is another serious 

problem for indigenous peoples in cities. They 

often reside in informal settlements and slums on 

the outskirts of the traditional city center that are 

overcrowded and do not have sufficient sanitation 

facilities, electricity, and other amenities. these 

settlements and slum are never constructed with 

long-term settlement in mind, so they are susceptible 

to mudslides and erosion, exposing residents to 

danger. 162 

An example of an indigenous group that has 

encountered intense discrimination after urbanization 

is the Murle community of South Sudan. in a search 

for increased employment opportunities, many Murle 

families migrated to the regional capital, Bor. in Bor, 

however, they have been unable to find jobs or get 

adequate housing because of the discrimination that 

they have faced from the majority ethnic group, the 

Dinka. Much of the economy of Bor is still based on 

agriculture, and the Murle community often faces 

revenge attacks from the Dinka for cattle death, even 

when there is no evidence that the Murle people had 

any involvement in deaths in the first place. The Dinka 

also harass the Murle when they hear them using 

their indigenous language around town. 163 

Current Situation 

Statistics about the current state of poverty among 

indigenous populations make clear the seriousness 

of the problem the international community is facing 

today. Rates of poverty among indigenous peoples 

are significantly higher than those among nonminority 

groups. Overall, indigenous peoples make 

up between four and five percent of the world’s total 

population, a small but substantial minority. When 

we restrict our focus to the world’s poor population, 

however, the relative size of the indigenous 

population dramatically increases; it is estimated that 

been ten and fifteen percent of the world’s poor are 

members of indigenous minorities. 164, 165 Given the fact 

that many indigenous peoples reside outside of urban 

centers, it is not surprising that they make up an even 

higher portion (around one-third) of the world’s rural 

poor population. 166 Of all of the indigenous peoples 

throughout the world, just over one-third live in 

poverty. 167 

As will be discussed below, one of the major 

obstacles in solving the problem of poverty among 

indigenous peoples is the lack of information on the 

current condition that such populations are facing in 

different regions. That being said, the information 

that we do have on indigenous poverty presents a 

dire reality. Latin America, with its sizeable indigenous 

population, provides a good case study. Across the 

region, rates of poverty among indigenous peoples are 

significantly higher than those among ethnic majority 

groups. In Peru, for example, 65% of the indigenous 

population lives in poverty, as opposed to 43% of the 

general population. 168 Bolivia and Guatemala have 

even higher rates, with about half of the population 

under the poverty line, including three-quarters of all 

indigenous peoples. In the Latin American country 

with the highest poverty rates, Ecuador, only one in 

ten members of indigenous communities do not live 

in poverty; as suggested above, the problem is even 

more pronounced in rural areas, with 96% of rural 

indigenous Ecuadorians under the poverty line. 169 the 

issue of poverty among indigenous peoples in Latin 

America affects not only the indigenous communities 

themselves but also the general population. In 

Mexico, for example, rates of extreme poverty are 

almost five times higher in regions with significant 

40 


indigenous populations than in those without, not 

only for the indigenous peoples but also for nonindigenous 

groups living in the area. 170 

the dire situations that indigenous peoples face 

in Latin America is also evident in developmental 

indicators other than simple poverty rates. According 

to a study by the International Labour Organization, 

members of indigenous communities in Latin American 

earn approximately half of the income earned by the 

average non-minority citizen. 171 Such a statistic has 

obvious implications for indigenous peoples’ access 

to basic resources and services, including food, 

shelter, and healthcare, and underscores why the 

poverty rates among indigenous populations are so 

high. Indigenous peoples are also behind in indicators 

of overall health. Malnutrition rates, for example, are 

twice as high among the indigenous population than 

the majority ethnic groups. 172 unfortunately, as the 

overall population in most Latin American countries 

has seen progress toward economic development in 

recent years, this does not seem to be the case for 

indigenous groups. In Guatemala, the overall poverty 

rate has fallen almost thirty percentage points in the 

past twenty years, while the indigenous poverty rate 

has remained essentially the same. Some countries, 

like Chile, have seen poverty rates for indigenous 

peoples fall at the same pace as those for the general 

population, but they are the exception rather than 

the rule in Latin America. 173 

In Asia, another continent with significant 

indigenous populations, poverty rates for those 

indigenous peoples have been rapidly falling. In China, 

for example, the overall poverty rate has declined 

from 84% in 1981 to just 16% in 2005, and the rates 

among indigenous populations have actually fallen 

even more drastically than those for the majority 

Han ethnic group, though the overall percentage of 

indigenous poor remains higher than that of poor 

Han Chinese. Current estimates put the poverty rate 

among the indigenous population in China at 5.4%, 

by far the lowest among countries with a significant 

number of indigenous groups. 174 Vietnam and India 

have seen similar, though less extreme, progress, 

with poverty rates among indigenous peoples falling 

about 20% to current levels of 52.3% in Vietnam and 

43.8% in India. An analysis of the statistics for Vietnam 

shows, however, that some changes in policy are 

necessary; while the poverty rate among indigenous 

peoples has fallen by about 20%, the poverty rate for 

the majority ethnic population fell over 40% in the 

same period. 175 While it is unclear whether declines 

in poverty rates mean that indigenous populations 

are actually doing better overall or, as this figure 

suggest, that there are other areas in which they still 

lag behind the majority ethnic group, these statistics 

In many of the world’s largest developing nations, the indigenous 

poverty rate is higher than that of the general population. 

41 


do provide hope that an improvement in the situation 

of indigenous peoples is possible. 

The impoverishment of indigenous peoples is not a 

problem that is confined to the developing world. The 

united States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand 

also have small indigenous populations that exhibit 

developmental indices well below those of the nonindigenous 

populations. in terms of unemployment, 

indigenous rates are two to three times higher in these 

countries than the non-indigenous rates. As of 2009 in 

New Zealand, for example, 7.7% of indigenous peoples 

did not have meaningful employment, as opposed to 

3.8% of the rest of the population. 176 Income levels 

for indigenous populations are significantly lower 

than those for non-indigenous groups; in the United 

States, Native Americans earn approximately half of 

what the general population makes. In Canada, 60% 

of the indigenous population in cities live below the 

poverty line, including 80% of indigenous peoples 

in Winnipeg. 177 Of these countries, Australia has the 

worst record in terms of indigenous poverty, with 

only 34% of indigenous peoples owning their own 

In developed countries, like the United States, Canada, Australia, 

and New Zealand, indigenous peoples comprise a large proportion 

of the poor population 

homes and half of all indigenous communities lacking 

access to a safe water supply. 178 

As mentioned in the introduction to this topic, the 

need to diminish the impoverishment of indigenous 

peoples can be thought of as an aspect of the first 

MDG: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 

worldwide. The specific subgoals of the first MDG 

are to halve the proportion of people living on less 

than $1 a day and the proportion of people who suffer 

from hunger and to achieve decent employment for 

women, men, and young people. The twelve years 

since the establishment of the MDGs have seen mixed 

overall progress toward these targets. Only slight 

progress has been made in reducing hunger; while 

the percentage of people that are undernourished 

has dropped from 19.8% to 15.5% between 1990 

and 2008, the overall number of undernourished 

individuals has remained stagnant at around 850 

million, and rates of undernourishment are still 

around 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern 

Asia. 179 A similar situation is evident with the target of 

achieving decent employment, with a decrease in the 

working poverty rate but not in the absolute number 

of employed people living beneath the poverty line. 

The vast majority of progress in the area has been 

made in eastern Asia, meaning that the situation 

remains grim for the poor in other regions. 180 On a 

more positive note, however, the first subgoal of the 

first MDG, halving the number of people living on less 

than $1 per day, has likely already been achieved on a 

global scale. According to a United Nations progress 

report on the MDG, the portion of people living on 

less than $1.25 (inflation-adjusted) per day dropped 

from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008; a preliminary World 

Bank report has this figure even lower for 2010, which 

would put the poverty rate at less than half of the 

1990 baseline. 181 

While the global progress on poverty reduction 

is laudable, it masks the fact that many indigenous 

populations are not enjoying the same reductions 

in impoverishment and hunger. Most countries will 

likely reach the benchmark set out in the Millennium 

Declaration of halving the number of proportion of 

42 


people living on $1 per day, but the indigenous groups 

within their borders will not. 182 Because indigenous 

peoples do not make up a large percentage of the 

total population of many countries, the levels of 

various development indicators achieved by these 

countries are hardly affected by worse statistics for 

indigenous communities. That should not be taken 

to mean, however, that the economic development 

of indigenous communities should not be a priority 

for national governments. Many policies aimed at 

reducing poverty and hunger to the targets set in the 

first MDG do not reach indigenous peoples and do 

not take their specific needs and circumstances into 

account. 183 Any plan to achieve true success with the 

Millennium Development Goals will have to include 

special policies designed specifically for indigenous 

peoples. 

the importance of targeting indigenous peoples for 

achieving the MDGs becomes evident by examining the 

progress of nations and their indigenous populations 

toward various MDG targets. Two types of countries 

emerge through this analysis. The first are countries 

that are on track to achieve certain MDG targets but 

have indigenous minorities that will not reach the 

same level of improvement. Minorities in Vietnam, 

for example, have poverty rates 40% higher than 

the majority ethnic population. Mexico, a member 

of the Organisation for economic Co-operation and 

Development (OECD), is likely to reach almost all 

of the MDG targets, but the region of Metlatonoc, 

which is 98% indigenous, has development indices 

comparable to Malawi and Angola, two of the most 

underdeveloped countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 184 

the second category of countries are those that are 

not going to reach some of the MDG targets because 

of their indigenous minority groups, including many 

African nations like Cameroon, Mali, and Senegal. 

In Niger, for example, 29% of children experienced 

nutrition deprivation in 2006, a figure that was 

elevated due to the 33% and 30% rates among the Peul 

and tuareg minority populations. 185 these statistics 

make it clear that more must be done to specifically 

target indigenous peoples in order to achieve the 

MdGs for all segments of the population. 

Many people working toward improving the 

situation for indigenous peoples believe that the 

framework of the MDGs needs to be altered if we 

hope to achieve the MDG targets among indigenous 

populations. Firstly, the MDGs do not explain the 

need to address indigenous groups differently. 

Because of this, national development policies do 

not take indigenous groups into account. A survey of 

MDG reports from various nations shows that 68% of 

countries’ plans do not respond to the special needs 

of indigenous peoples, and many do not even mention 

the existence of indigenous peoples at all; additionally, 

when indigenous populations are mentioned in these 

reports, it is almost exclusive in the sections about 

the second MDG, which concern universal primary 

education. 186,187 As shown above, general statistics 

on MDG progress make the condition of indigenous 

peoples invisible. Secondly, the desire to achieve 

the MdG targets has encouraged some countries to 

take actions that harm their indigenous populations, 

like increased mining efforts in the Philippines and 

seizing of pastoral lands for agriculture in Kenya. 188 

thirdly, the MdGs are not framed in a human rightsbased 

way, meaning that they do not take into 

consideration the fact that a population cannot make 

significant developmental progress if they do not 

have basic human rights. It is impossible to talk about 

reducing hunger, for example, without first ensuring 

that everyone has secured his or her right to food. 189 

Finally, the MDGs are enumerated as development 

targets and do not take account for the structural 

causes of poverty, including discrimination and a lack 

of indigenous civic involvement as discussed above. 190 

Reflecting on the way that the MDGs have been 

43 


conceptualized and implemented, some consider the 

MDGs themselves as a significant obstacle in bringing 

indigenous peoples out of poverty. 

Past international Action 

Given the severity of the current conditions 

of impoverishment for indigenous peoples, the 

international community has a surprisingly wellestablished 

base of resolutions and declarations on 

the topic. The United Nations General Assembly has 

listed the right to development among the standard 

human rights in numerous resolutions over the 

past sixty years, beginning with the 1948 Universal 

Declaration on Human Rights. The International 

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 

of 1966 also includes various aspects of the right 

to development, including the right to work in a 

profession of one’s choice, the right to fair wages, 

the right to an adequate standard of living, and 

the right to freedom from hunger. 191 this right 

was formalized in 1986 with the United Nations 

Declaration on the Right to Development, which 

defines development as “a comprehensive economic, 

social, cultural and political process, which aims at the 

constant improvement of the well-being of the entire 

population and of all individuals.” 192 it calls upon all 

states to work toward development for all peoples 

and to specifically protect equal access to basic 

resources, food, housing, and the fair distribution 

of income. Thus, the rights to development and 

to freedom from impoverishment are thoroughly 

established in United Nations precedent. 

The first major international treaty to codify 

the developmental rights specifically accorded to 

indigenous peoples is the 1989 International Labour 

Organization (ILO) Indigenous and Tribal Peoples 

Convention. The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples 

Convention updated a previous ILO resolution, 

removing all calls for the assimilation and integration 

of indigenous peoples from the older document. 

it declares that states must help eliminate the 

socio-economic gap between indigenous and nonindigenous 

populations. It encourages governments 

to consult indigenous peoples in all developmental 

decisions. Finally, it lists a number of specific 

developmental rights that indigenous peoples are 

accorded, including the right to ownership over 

traditionally occupied lands, the right to consultation, 

consent, and adequate compensation for relocation, 

and the right to freedom from discrimination in 

employment. 193 Despite its passage by the ILO, the 

Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention has only 

been ratified by 22 nations and is not legally binding 

in most countries. 

The most relevant and recent international 

agreement is the 2007 united Nations declaration 

on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a landmark 

document in the modern human rights movement. 

With the declaration on the Rights of indigenous 

Peoples, the United Nations General Assembly 

affirmed for the first time that all previous human 

rights accords, including the Universal Declaration 

of Human Rights and the International Covenant on 

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, are applicable 

to indigenous peoples. the declaration on the 

Rights of indigenous Peoples goes on to enumerate 

a list of rights that are especially relevant for the 

problems that indigenous peoples face in the modern 

world. A number of these rights aim to secure 

the ability of indigenous peoples to emerge from 

impoverishment and to development economically 

while still maintaining their traditional cultures and 

livelihoods. Article 20, for example, reserves the right 

for indigenous peoples to have security in whatever 

means of subsistence and development they choose. 

Article 23 explicitly protects the right to development 

for indigenous peoples and reads: 

“Indigenous peoples have the right 

to determine and develop priorities 

44 


and strategies for exercising their 

right to development. In particular, 

indigenous peoples have the right 

to be actively involved in developing 

and determining health, housing 

and other economic and social 

programmes affecting them and, as 

far as possible, to administer such 

programmes through their own 

institutions.” 194 

thus, the declaration on the Rights of indigenous 

Peoples makes a strong statement in favor of 

assisting the development of indigenous groups 

through measures that cater to their needs and 

circumstances. 

the declaration on the Rights of indigenous 

Peoples also deals directly with a number of the 

causes of impoverishment in indigenous communities 

that were discussed above. Articles 18 and 19, for 

example, call on states to include indigenous peoples 

in the decision-making process on issues that affect 

them through inclusion in representative bodies and 

consultation with indigenous institutions. Article 

21 protects “the right, without discrimination, to 

the improvement of their economic and social 

conditions,” including in the areas of employment, 

housing, and sanitation. 195 A number of different 

articles discuss the issue of indigenous land rights. 

Article 10 states that indigenous peoples shall not 

be removed from their land without consent and fair 

compensation. Article 26 gives indigenous peoples 

the rights to the lands that they have traditionally 

occupied and used and calls upon states to give 

legal recognition to these claims. Finally, Article 27 

encourages governments to set up processes for 

adjudicating local land rights disputes. 196 

As evident in this brief description of the previous 

international action on the impoverishment of 

indigenous peoples, there is a strong precedent for 

protecting the right of indigenous groups to equal 

opportunities for development. The dire conditions 

in which many indigenous peoples find themselves 

today, however, suggest that this legal and 

theoretical precedent is not enough. In order to solve 

this problem, more calls for the protection of various 

human rights will not be enough; the international 

community must instead implement concrete plans 

and policies for reducing poverty among indigenous 

populations. 

Possible Solutions 

As suggested in the discussion of the problems 

with the framework of the Millennium Development 

Goals, the first step in solving the issue of poverty 

among indigenous peoples is the creation of a 

system for gathering more information on the 

situations that indigenous peoples face and for 

understanding the specific circumstances of 

each group. First, instead of broad statistics for 

development indices across the entire population, it 

is necessary for countries to collect disaggregated 

data for indigenous groups. 197 Collecting information 

specific to indigenous people would also encourage 

improved data collection techniques in general. 

Having better data on indigenous populations would 

raise awareness among the international community 

on the issues facing these groups and would provide 

an impetus for the implementation of policies that 

are specifically targeted toward them. 198 in addition 

to quantitative data, it is also vital to understand the 

different circumstances that lead to poverty among 

various indigenous populations. Some populations 

are impoverished because they live in remote areas 

without access to infrastructure and basic services; 

others, because governments and private investors 

have taken their local lands for development projects. 

Plans and policies for improving the economic 

situation of a specific population will, of course, 

depend on the causes that lead to impoverishment 

45 


in the first place. Additionally, as mentioned in the 

introduction, there is no definitive level of wealth 

that constitutes “poverty;” instead, it is necessary 

to develop policies that help each indigenous group 

reach their own version of economic sufficiency. 199 

Another way of making the MDGs more relevant to 

indigenous peoples is to require nations to discuss 

such populations in their regular MdG reports. 

Each of the causes of impoverishment among 

indigenous peoples discussed above requires unique 

solutions. The easiest one to solve is most likely 

the lack of participation of indigenous peoples in 

the development discussion. Most governments 

simply do not seek input from indigenous groups 

concerning developmental polices and initiatives, 

and it should not be very difficult for governments to 

create methods of encouraging participation. Such 

solutions could involve more budget transparency for 

development programs or the creation of indigenous 

advisory councils. 200 Some suggest that the process of 

political empowerment only occurs over a long period 

of time and that local direct empowerment may have 

a more immediate effect. There is evidence from 

other aspects of development that this strategy may 

work. In some rural, impoverished districts in Mexico, 

for example, parents were given the ability to allocate 

small sums of money for various education programs; 

Specialized proposals are necessary for each indigenous group to 

lift them from poverty and improve their well-being. 

after this system was initiated, the standardized test 

scores of these schools improved. 201 

Other causes of impoverishment among indigenous 

peoples may be more difficult to solve. The Declaration 

on the Rights of indigenous Peoples explicitly protects 

indigenous land rights, but most countries have failed 

to implement these policies on a national level. Thus, 

the framework exists to solve this problem, but it is 

now a matter of putting it into practice. A successful 

solution to this problem will involve the creation of 

a system for evaluating indigenous land rights and 

adjudicating disputes between indigenous peoples 

and private corporations. Such a proposal could also 

include a method of compensation for past and future 

relocations. A complex plan is also needed to stop 

indigenous peoples from being denied basic services, 

housing, and employment because of their ethnicity. 

Some suggest that countries implement affirmative 

action-type programs for public employment, and 

housing so that indigenous minorities that are unable 

to secure jobs and housing in the private sector are 

protected. 202 Alternatively, stricter laws and penalties 

can be enforced to prevent such discrimination in the 

public and private sectors. 

The effects of trade liberalization are perhaps the 

most difficult aspect of this problem to solve. Many 

scholars and politicians consider trade liberalization 

to be an instrumental part of the modern economy 

and a necessary condition for sustained economic 

growth, so it is unlikely that most governments 

would be willing to act to increase tariffs and keep 

out transnational companies to protect indigenous 

industries and land rights. Possible solutions will 

have to focus on preventing the effects of trade 

liberalization from harming indigenous peoples. Such 

measures could include programs to compensate 

indigenous workers for lost earnings or the creation 

of protected areas for indigenous groups to continue 

their traditional lifestyles free from interference from 

46 


the government or foreign companies. 

Questions a Resolution Must Answer 

(QARMA) 

1. How can governments protect indigenous 

peoples from the harms of trade liberalization 

without hindering overall economic growth 

and development? 

2. How can the international community protect 

indigenous land rights in the face of significant 

resource extraction and infrastructural 

development projects? 

3. What measures can governments take 

to ensure indigenous participation in the 

development discussion? 

4. How can we guarantee access for indigenous 

peoples to employment, housing, and other 

social services without a fear of discrimination? 

5. Should the first MDG, and possibly the entire 

MDG program, be altered to reflect the needs 

of indigenous peoples? if so, how? 

Key Actors and Positions 

Perhaps the most important actors for this topic are 

the indigenous peoples themselves. Unfortunately, 

given the structure of the United Nations, non-state 

groups have no direct input into the proceedings 

of the committee. That said, however, it is essential 

that all states consider the severity of the problem 

of indigenous impoverishment and the effect 

that any policy proposal may have on indigenous 

populations. Given their traditional livelihood and 

cultures, developmental initiatives will affect them 

differently than they would members of the majority 

ethnic population, and it is necessary to keep this in 

mind. One of the purposes of the united Nations is to 

give support to those that are normally not heard on 

the international stage, and the world’s indigenous 

peoples definitely qualify as such a marginalized 

group. 

In 2007, four nations voted against the UN 

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: the 

united States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. 

These countries all have indigenous populations that 

have been almost completely eliminated by European 

settlers over the past four centuries, and the 

governments of these countries have confined the 

indigenous groups that remain to either territories 

that are a fraction of the land that they traditionally 

controlled or territories in completely new areas. 

Though they have since announced their support 

for the initiative, these four countries originally 

opposed the declaration on the Rights of indigenous 

Peoples for a number of reasons. One concern was 

that it would give tribal law precedence over national 

law. 203 Another was that it put indigenous peoples 

at an unfair advantage against the non-indigenous 

population and essentially granted indigenous 

peoples the right to full self-determination. 204 Finally, 

the provision in the declaration that gave indigenous 

peoples the right to all of their traditionally-held lands 

would mean that the entire territory of these four 

countries would have to be returned to indigenous 

control at the expense of modern, legal ownership. 205 

In general, these four countries have been resistant 

to significant steps to improve the economic situation 

of impoverished peoples. Additionally, companies 

from these four nations are primarily responsible 

for the negative effects that trade liberalization has 

had on indigenous groups in developing countries. 

Many of these developing countries, primarily in 

Africa and Asia, would be hesitant to oppose to the 

united States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on 

issues concerning indigenous rights since they rely so 

heavily on investment and aid from these countries 

for economic growth. 

The nations that have been most supportive of 

indigenous rights on the international level are those 

from Europe and Latin America. Most European 

47 


countries do not have what would traditionally be 

considered indigenous peoples, and thus they see the 

issue of indigenous impoverishment as another aspect 

of human rights and international development. 

they were among the foremost proponents of the 

declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples 

and have included indigenous peoples as a priority 

group in some of their most important resolutions on 

development, including the 2005 European Consensus 

on Development. 206 The nations of Latin America also 

have a history of supporting indigenous peoples 

in international forums. Of the twenty-two states 

to ratify the International Labour Organization’s 

Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, fifteen 

were from Latin America. Despite the support that 

these countries have given to indigenous rights issues, 

many of them do not have such positive records on 

actually implementing policies to aid indigenous 

groups. As discussed above, Latin America has among 

the highest poverty rates for indigenous peoples of 

any region in the world, and little improvement in 

the conditions that indigenous peoples face has been 

seen in recent years. 

Finally, the remaining countries, most of which are 

in Africa and Asia, have mixed policies with regard to 

indigenous development. Most of these countries 

have marginalized populations that are traditionally 

considered to be indigenous, even though these 

countries do not have the same colonial histories as 

North and South America and Australia and Oceania. 

These countries are generally still developing and thus 

are concerned more with overall economic growth 

than assisting a small minority of the population, 

which explains their historic policies on land and 

trade liberalization. Often, these governments do 

not have the resources to create special programs 

for indigenous peoples and will need some assistance 

to implement the plans that the committee drafts. 

Some countries in Asia and Africa, however, do 

not recognize the existence of their indigenous 

populations in the first place. China, for example, 

has been committed to strong economic growth 

for its population, including for minority groups, 

and has seen success in reducing poverty among its 

minorities, but it denies that any of these groups are 

indigenous. By denying the indigenous status of its 

minorities, China has legitimized its use of resource 

extraction and relocation as methods of reducing 

poverty among its indigenous populations. 207 

Suggestions for Further Research 

There is a wealth of information about the 

impoverishment of indigenous peoples on the 

websites of various intergovernmental and nongovernmental 

groups. The United Nations has a 

number of different groups dedicated to indigenous 

peoples, including the Permanent Forum on 

indigenous issues and the expert Mechanism on the 

Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These organizations 

have published countless reports on issues of 

indigenous development and indigenous rights and 

may be good places to start for general information 

on indigenous peoples. The World Bank also has 

extensive information about indigenous development 

and poverty, including some country-specific reports. 

The World Bank website is also a good resource 

to learn about economic development in general. 

Additionally, i would recommend doing some 

research on the first MDG; you can find information 

on the MDG section of the United Nations website or 

on the website of the United Nations Development 

Programme. 

it is also important to do research on the indigenous 

peoples that reside within the country that you are 

representing and your country’s policy toward them. 

Almost every country has some indigenous groups, 

and each indigenous group has a different history 

and current situation. Some indigenous populations 

48 


are doing as well as the majority ethnic group, 

though most lag behind in development levels. Some 

are most affected by the loss of local land rights, 

while others face widespread discrimination. Some 

governments accept and protect the unique cultures 

and practices of indigenous peoples; others force 

them to assimilate and even deny their existence in 

the first place. Before developing creative solutions 

to this problem then, you must uncover the specific 

needs of the indigenous peoples within your borders 

and figure out what your country’s attitude toward 

such groups has traditionally been. 

Position Papers 

each delegation must turn in two position papers 

before the start of conference. The purpose of the 

position paper is to give each delegation the chance 

to summarize their understanding of the issue 

at hand, to delineate their nation’s stance on the 

issue, and to propose possible solutions that could 

be debated in committee. Please take this chance 

to immerse yourself in the two topics that we will 

discuss in SOCHUM; I hope you will see it more as an 

opportunity and a challenge than a chore. 

When writing your position papers, there is a 

simple format that you should stick to; it will make 

it easier for you to write and for me to read. The first 

paragraph of your position paper should describe 

what you feel are the most pressing and pertinent 

aspects of the issue, as well as some facts that you 

could use in debate or to support a point and how 

you nation relates to the topic. the second paragraph 

should be used to describe what your nation thinks 

about the previous international action taken on the 

issue. Finally, your third and last paragraph should 

contain your ideas for possible solutions as well as 

courses of action that you believe should be included 

in a resolution. each delegation should complete one 

position paper per topic area. When writing, make 

sure you use the third person; instead of saying “I 

believe” or “we believe,” say “the delegation of 

Nation X believes” or something similar. All position 

papers should be written in Times New Roman 

12-point font, single-spaced and be approximately 

one page in length. 

Closing Remarks 

Thank you for taking the time to read carefully 

about both topic areas. I know that these topic areas 

are complex, and I appreciate the effort that you 

have put in just by reading this study guide. As you 

have probably realized, however, this study guide 

only provides a limited introduction to each topic 

area, and there is a wealth of additional information 

in books and on the Internet that I encourage you to 

read. the more sources you consult in your research, 

the more you will understand these topics and the 

more rewarding your experience at WorldMuN will 

be. I also urge you to become an expert on the facts 

and positions of the country that you are selected to 

represent, which will make your time in committee 

even more enjoyable. 

I am very excited to meet all of you in Melbourne 

in March. As my last WorldMUN, I know that it will 

be a truly memorable opportunity, and I hope that I 

will be able to make your experience as unforgettable 

and gratifying as possible. Please do not hesitate 

to contact me if you have any questions about the 

topics areas, WorldMUN, or Model UN, or even if 

you just want to say hello. I look forward to being 

there in Melbourne as you make SOCHUM the best 

committee at WorldMuN 2013! 

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Endnotes 

1 “Social, Humanitarian & Cultural – Third Committee.” 

General Assembly of the United Nations. 13 

September 2011. 24 July 2012. 

2 Peterson, M.J. The General Assembly in World 

Politics. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986, p. 36. 

3 eilan, Arieh. The General Assembly: Can It Be 

Salvaged? Washington DC: The Heritage Foundation, 

1984, p. 14. 

4 Peterson, p. 36. 

5 Luard, Evan. The United Nations: How It Works and 

What it does. London: Macmilliam, 1994, p. 45. 

6 Luard, p. 73. 

7 Bailey, Sydney d. The General Assembly of the 

United Nations: A Study of Procedure and Practice. 

Westport: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1964, p. 104. 

8 Crystal, David. Language Death. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 21. 

9 Crystal, p. 11. 


11 Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Endangered languages: does 

size matter?” Languages of the World. 22 April 2011. 

25 June 2012. http://languagesoftheworld.info/ 

geolinguistics/endangered-languages-does-the-sizematter.html. 

12 Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Are dying languages worth 

saving?” Languages of the World. 21 September 

2010. 18 June 2012. http://languagesoftheworld.info/ 

geolinguistics/are-dying-languages-worth-saving. 

html. 

13 Brezinger, Matthias. “Language Endangerment 

throughout the World” in Trends in Linguistics: 

Language Diversity Endangered. ed. Matthias 

Brezinger. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, p. x-xi. 

14 Tsunoda, Tasaku. “Language Endangerment and 

Language Revitalization” in Trends in Linguistic: 

Studies and Monographs 148. eds. Walter Bisang et 

al. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005, p. 58. 

15 Dorian, Nancy C. “Western language ideologies 

and small-language prospects” in endangered 


Response. Eds. Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. 

Whaley.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 

1998, p. 4. 

16 Tsunoda, p. 4. 


18 Crystal, p. 73 






24 dorian, p. 5. 

25 Skutnall-Kangas, Tove. Linguistic Genocide in 

Education-or Worldwide Diversity and Human 

Rights? Nahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum 

Associates, Publishers, 2000, p. 428. 

26 dorian, p. 7. 

27 Skutnall-Kangas, p. 425. 

28 dauenhauer, Nora M. and dauenhauer, Richard, 

“Technical, emotional, and ideological issues in 

reversing language shift: examples from Southeast 

Alaska” in Endangered Languages: Language Loss 

and Community Response. Eds. Lenore A. Grenoble 

and Lindsay J. Whaley. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1998, p. 64. 

29 Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer, p. 65. 




33 tsunoda, p. 33. 

34 dorian, p. 11. 

35 Ibid. 

36 Bhattacharjee, Yudhijiy. “Why Bilinguals Are 

Smarter.” The New York Times. 17 March 2012. 13 

June 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/ 

opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html. 


38 Grenoble, Lenore A. “Language ecology and 

endangerment” in The Cambridge Handbook of 

Endangered Languages.” eds. Peter Austin and Julia 

Sallabank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 

2011, p. 34. 

39 Dorian, p. 6. 


41 Grenoble, p. 34. 

42 Harbert, Wayne. “Endangered languages and 

economic development” in The Cambridge 

Handbook of Endangered Languages. eds. Peter 

Austin and Julia Sallabank. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 2011 p. 405. 


53 



45 Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16 th Edition). 

Ed. Paul Lewis. Dallas: SIL International, 2009. Online 

Version. 

46 De Dominicis, Amedeo. “Introduction” in 

Undescribed and Endangered Languages. ed. 

Amedeo De Dominicis. Newcastle: Cambridge 

Scholars Press, 2006, p. 1. 




50 Ibid. 








58 Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Linguistic diversity and language 

endangerment in Papua New Guinea.” Languages 

of the World. 24 July 2011. 20 June 2012. http:// 

languagesoftheworld.info/australia-and-papuanew-guinea/linguistic-diversity-and-languageendangerment-in-papua-new-guinea.html. 




62 King James’s Bible. Genesis 11: 1-9. 14 June 2012. 

. 


64 Ibid. 

65 McWhorter, John. “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The 

Universality of English.” World Affairs. Fall 2009. 

13 June 2012. http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/ 

article/cosmopolitan-tongue-universality-english. 

66 McWhorter. “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The 

Universality of English.” 



69 Hale, Ken. “On endangered languages and the 

importance of linguistic diversity” in endangered 


Response. Eds. Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. 

Whaley.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 

1998, p. 192. 

70 Hale, p. 194. 


72 Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Obituary: the Ubykh Language.” 

Languages of the World. 25 January 2012. 18 June 2012. 

http://languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/ 

obituary-the-ubykh-language.html. 

73 Austin, Peter K. and Sallabank, Julia. “Introduction” 

in The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered 

Languages.” Eds. Peter Austin and Julia Sallabank. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 7. 




77 “Endangered Languages: Biodiversity and Linguistic 

Diversity.” United Nations Educational, Scientific and 

Cultural Organization. 18 June 2012. http://www. 

unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangeredlanguages/biodiversity-and-linguistic-diversity/. 

78 Michael, p. 136. 

79 Michael, Lev. “Language and Culture” in the 

Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages.” 

Eds. Peter Austin and Julia Sallabank. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2011 p. 134. 

80 Swoyer, Chris, “Relativism”, The Stanford 

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), 

Edward N. Zalta (ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/ 

archives/win2010/entries/relativism/. 

81 Fishman, J.A. “Why is it so hard to save a threated 

language?” in Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? 

Ed. Joshua Fishman. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 

Ltd, 2001, p. 3. 

82 Hale, p. 204. 

83 Fishman, p. 4. 

84 Ibid 




88 dorian, p. 17. 

89 Sallabank, Julia. “Language policy for endangered 




2011, p. 279. 

90 Kelly Tara. “Google Endangered Languages Project 

Seeks to Save Forgotten Tongues.” The Huffington 

Post. 21 June 2012. 25 June 2012. http://www. 

huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/google-endangeredlanguages-project_n_1617106.html. 

91 Pereltsvaig, Asya. “Modern Technology Helps Save 

Dying Languages.” Languages of the World. 16 May 

2012. 24 June 2012. http://languagesoftheworld. 

info/geolinguistics/endangered-languages/moderntechnology-helps-save-dying-languages.html. 

92 Hinton, p. 307. 

93 Hinton, Leanne. “Revitalization of endangered 



54 



2011, p. 299. 

94 Sallabank, p. 280. 

95 Ibid. 

96 Dorian, p. 14. 

97 dorian, p. 13. 

98 “Project History.” Wampanoag Language 

Reclamation Project. 24 June 2012. http://wlrp.org/ 

History.html. 


100 Ibid. 

101 “Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging 

to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic 

Minorities.” United Nations General Assembly 

47/135. 18 December 1992. Web. 

102 Ibid. 

103 “Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.” 

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural 

Organization. 2 November 2001. Web. 

104 “Convention for the Safegaurding of Intangible 

Cultural Heritage.” United Nations Educational, 

Scientific and Cultural Organization. 17 October 

2003. Web. 

105 “Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the 

Diversity of Cultural Expressions.” United Nations 

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 20 

October 2005. Web. 

106 “Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights.” World 

Conference on Linguistic Rights. 9 June 1996. Web. 

107 “What is SIL International?” Summer Institute of 

Linguistics, Inc. 26 June 2012. http://www.sil.org/sil/. 

108 Nye, John V.C. “Standard of Living and Modern 

economic Growth.” The Concise Encyclopedia of 

Economics. 2008. Library of Economics and Liberty. 

12 July 2012. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/ 

StandardsofLivingandModernEconomicGrowth. 

html 

109 Freedman, Ethan. “Poverty Rates Strikingly High 

Among indigenous Populations.” Global Issues. 20 

June 2012. 23 July 2012. http://www.globalissues. 

org/news/2012/06/20/14078. 

110 “Marginalised Minorities in Development 

Programming: A UNDP Resource Guide and 

Toolkit.” United Nations Development Programme, 

Democratic Governance Group, Bureau for 

Development Policy. New York. May 2010. Web. 

111 Riddell, Roger. “Minorities, Minority Rights and 

Development: An Issues Paper.” Minority Rights 

Group International. New York. 1998. Print. 

112 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” United 

Nations General Assembly. 10 December 1948. 12 

July 2012. Web. 

113 “United Nations Millennium Declaration.” United 

Nations General Assembly 55/2. 18 September 2000. 

14 July 2012. Web. 

114 “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.” 

International Labour Organization C169. 27 June 

1989. Web. 

115 Bhalla, A.S. and Qiu, Shufang. Poverty and Inequality 

among Chinese Minorities. Routledge: London, 

2006, p. 1. 

116 Bhalla and Qiu, p. 4-5. 

117 Bhalla and Qiu, p. 3. 

118 Bhalla and Qiu, p. 2. 

119 “Agreement on Agriculture.” World Trade 

Organization. 1995. Web. 

120 “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” 2009. 

121 Ibid. 

122 “Eliminating discrimination against indigenous 

and tribal peoples in employment and occupation: 

A guide to ILO Convention No. 111.” International 

Labor Organization. 2007. Web. 

123 Nori, Michele et al. “Browsing on fences: Pastoral 

land rights, livelihoods and adaptation to climate 

change.” International Institute for Environment 

and Development. London. May 2008. Web. 

124 “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” United 

Nations Department on Economic and Social Affairs. 

New York. 2009. Web. 

125 Ibid. 

126 Young, Laura A. and Sing’Oei, Korir. “Land, 

livelihoods and identities: Inter-community conflicts 

in east Africa.” Minority Rights Group international. 

2011. Web. 


128 Ibid. 

129 Ibid. 


131 young and Sing-Oei, 2011. 

132 Ortega, Roque Roldán. “Models for Recognizing 

Indigenous Land Rights in Latin America. The World 

Bank Environment Department. October 2004. Web. 


134 Ibid. 


136 Mollers, Judith. “Survival Strategies of Ethnic 

Minorities in the Highlands of Northern Thailand – 

Case Studies From Chiang Rai Province” in the Role 

of Minorities in the Development Process. eds Armin 

Bohnet and Matthias Hoher. Frankfurt am Main: 

Peter Lang, 2004, p. 131. 

137 Mollers, p. 129. 

138 Mollers, p. 135. 

139 Mollers, p. 134. 

55 


140 Mollers, p. 132. 

141 Mollers, p. 135. 

142 Simon, p. 64. 

143 Simon, p. 68. 

144 Simon, p. 71. 



147 Riddell, 1998. 

148 Khan. 2010. 

149 “Minority and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the 

Millennium Development Goals.” Minority Rights 

Group International. 2003. Web. 


Programming: A UNDP Resource Guide and Toolkit.” 

2010. 

151 Khan. 2010. 

152 Khan. 2010. 

153 Ibid. 



2010. 

155 “Factsheet: Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.” 

International Monetary Fund. 19 April 2012. 19 July 

2012. . 

156 Khan. 2010. 

157 Ibid 

158 “Eliminating discrimination against indigenous and 


guide to ILO Convention No. 111.” 2007. 

159 Khan, 2010. 

160 Ibid. 









165 “Improving the Odds of Achieving the MDGs: Global 

Monitoring Report 2011.” International Bank for 

Reconstruction and Development/World Bank. 

Washington DC. 2011. Web. 



Monitoring Report 2011,” 2011. 


169 Hall, Gilette and Patrinos, Harry Anthony. “Indigenous 

Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin 

America: 1994-2004.” The World Bank. 2005. Web 

170 Ibid. 


172 Ibid. 



174 Ibid. 




177 Ibid. 

178 Ibid. 

179 “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012.” 

united Nations department of economic and Social 

Affairs. June 2012. Web. 

180 Ibid. 

181 Ibid. 


Monitoring Report 2011,” 2011 


Millennium Development Goals.” 2003. 



185 Ibid. 

186 Corpuz, Victoria Tauli. “Making the MDGs relevant 

for indigenous Peoples.” Presented at the 2005 

ECOSOC, High-Level Segment. 16 March 2005. Web. 



2010. 

188 Corpuz, 2005. 

189 Ibid. 

190 Ibid. 

191 “International Covenant on Economic, Social and 

Cultural Rights.” United Nations General Assembly 

2200A. 16 December 1966. Web. 

192 “United Nations Declaration on the Right to 

Development. United Nations General Assembly 

41/128. 1986. Web. 

193 “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.” 1989. 

194 “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of 

indigenous Peoples.” united Nations General 

Assembly 61/295. 13 September 2007. Web. 

195 Ibid. 

196 Ibid. 





2010. 





56 


2010. 





2010. 

203 “Indigenous rights outlined by UN.” BBC News. 13 

September 2007. 23 July 2012. http://news.bbc. 

co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6993776.stm. 

204 “Native rights declaration inconsistent with legal 

tradition: Strahl.” Canada.com. 13 September 2007. 

23 July 2012. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/ 

news/story.html?id=23df9769-3423-4f43-b828a755725c2719&k=23677. 

205 “Maori Party’s head in the clouds.” New Zealand 

Government. 14 September 2007. 23 July 2012. http:// 

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0709/S00272.htm. 

206 “The European Consensus on Development.” 

European Council 2006/C 46. 24 February 2006. 

Web. 

207 “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of 

indigenous People and the uyghurs of east 

Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur 

Autonomous Region or XUAR, People’s Republic of 

China).” Uyghur Human Rights Project. Web. 

57

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