Minority and Indigenous Communities Turned off Own Land

Minority and indigenous communities turned off own land in growing numbers

Mark Anderson, The Guardian

2 July 2015

Image: Yazidis cross the Tigris river as they make their way from Syria into Iraq. Displacement fuelled by religious persecution is on the rise wordlwide. Photograph: Martin Bader/Martin Bader/Demotix

Violence, persecution and quest for natural resources driving record numbers out of rural areas and into cities, claims Minority Rights Group study.

From the stateless Rohingya escaping oppression at the hands of Burma’s government to the Yazidis fleeing advancing Islamic State fighters in Iraq, more indigenous peoples and minority groups are being displaced from their land and pushed into cities, where they face discrimination, a study has warned.

The displacement of minority and native groups has risen over the past year, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) said in its latest report. The growing threat of violence and persecution is most vividly illustrated by the terrors the Islamic State has inflicted upon the Yazidi religious group in northern Iraq.

“The situation looks pretty dire if you look back at the last 12 or 18 months, particularly with the catastrophic situation facing religious minorities in the Middle East and the large-scale displacement of minority communities like the Yazidis out of Iraq,” said Carl Soderbergh, director of policy at MRG.

“Some of the smaller minority communities may no longer even be present in the countries where they’ve resided for millennia,” he added.

The hunt for natural resources is also fuelling the displacement of indigenous peoples, according to the study. In Colombia, people of African ancestry have been forced off their land by armed groups seeking to control gold mines, and the majority of Canada’s First Nations people now live in urban areas because they have been forced off their rural land by mining operations, the report said.

Greater monitoring of the displacement caused by natural resource extraction is needed, Soderbergh said. “There must be meaningful participation of indigenous peoples and the right to free, prior and informed consent when companies go in to extract natural resources.”

The report’s authors also criticised the failure of governments to involve communities in their policymaking processes. “Unfortunately, minorities and indigenous peoples still are not at the negotiating tables – they’re not in the rooms where decisions are taking place,” said Soderbergh.

The report highlighted countries where government persecution has threatened minority groups and indigenous peoples. In China, the government destroyed Uyghur traditional housing in Kashgar, raising the prospect of violence in the region, Soderbergh said.

Urbanisation across the world has made it harder than ever for governments, urban planners and civil society to protect the rights of minority groups and indigenous peoples in cities. Minorities who arrive in cities often live in informal settlements and can face police harassment and ghettoisation, the report warned.

Soaring populations and a lack of rural development is driving record numbers of people to urban centres. The UN has said that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050.

Benson Solit, 25, is a Sengwer from Kenya’s Embobut forest. He left his hometown in 2014, when the Sengwer were violently evicted from their land by forest service guards. At the time, the government said the evictions were a necessary measure to protect local water supplies.

Solit was forced to flee to Kenya’s teeming capital, Nairobi, where he now lives in an informal settlement. “I don’t really feel safe in Nairobi; we have some worries and I don’t feel comfortable,” he said, adding that he missed his home in the forest. However, he said he was enrolled in college and does odd jobs to make ends meet.

Solit’s story is similar to those of people from other groups around the world, many of whom have been forced to leave their land and, lacking other options, ventured to cities. The Kenyan government has projected that Nairobi’s population could rise from its current level of about 3.5 million people to 18.5 million by 2030.

Resettled minority groups and indigenous peoples usually move to the slums of large cities, which are plagued by poor urban planning, a lack of infrastructure and complicated land ownership systems. “I’m particularly worried that cities like Nairobi – or any number across Asia – are growing so hugely with very little thought for the future in terms of infrastructure and secure land tenure,” Soderbergh said.

The UN has predicted that about 40 “megacities”, each with a population of 10 million-plus, will exist by 2030, with Delhi, Shanghai and Tokyo among the most populated.

If there is no proper planning, the close proximity of lots of different ethnic groups in informal settlements “can lead to any number of problems, including tensions and violence,” said Soderbergh.

Without recognised land tenure, developers are reluctant to upgrade informal settlements, opting instead to evict entire communities and buy land from private owners. “If we don’t get people secure land tenure, especially as cities grow around them, then they will remain in a very precarious situation as developers start eyeing the land that they’re living on,” Soderbergh said.

The relocation of minority groups and indigenous peoples into cities has yielded some positive outcomes, according to the report.

Soderbergh said: “In a number of cities in Oceania, building techniques, land management techniques that indigenous peoples have will be absolutely vital to tackle the effects of climate change in the very near future.”