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motherlanguageday · 2 years

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A people without its language is like a bell without its tongue – silent: let us preserve Indigenous.

Today, according to the UN, there are about 6 000 languages globally, and 43% of them are endangered. Only a few hundred languages play a prominent role in education systems and in the public sector, and less than a hundred languages are used in the digital domain.

Languages play a crucial role in preserving identity of a person, groups of people and ensuring their peaceful coexistence. They serve as one of the strategic factors in making progress towards sustainable development and harmonious relationships at the global and local levels. Every year, by decision of the General Conference of UNESCO, 21 February is celebrated as International Mother Language Day.

How it all began

Following the designation of this International Day, the UN has increased its efforts to draw attention to language endangerment. In 2007, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages, and on 19 December 2016, declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages to point out the pressing issue of the loss of such languages and the need to preserve and revive them, as well as encourage their study and mastery.

Finally, on 18 December 2019, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the period from 2022 to 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages to draw global attention to the plight of many Indigenous languages and mobilize stakeholders and resources to preserve, revive and promote them.

FAO and Indigenous languages

FAO has six official languages. In the framework of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit is translating one of the organization’s founding documents, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, into different Indigenous languages. These Voluntary Guidelines are the first comprehensive global legal instrument on this subject, resulting from intergovernmental negotiations.

The document is currently available in 22 languages including Nepali, Miskito, Hindi, Albanian, Indonesian, Laothian and Amharic. In December 2022, FAO launched the VGGT translation in Sadri and Kurukh, Indigenous languages mainly spoken in India.

The Decade of Indigenous Languages in Russia

On 14 February 2022, the Government of the Russian Federation approved the action plan (in Russian) for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

In total, the plan provides for more than 60 events, which are divided into six thematic sections dedicated to improving public administration, education and teacher training, science, digitalization and book publishing. In particular, it is planned to develop keyboard layouts, fonts and mobile applications in national languages, create a virtual museum of the traditional culture of the Indigenous small-numbered Peoples of Siberia and the Far East, conduct tours of theater troupes and other events.

The All-Russian Ethno-Dictation in the Indigenous languages, which took place on 18 February 2022, gave birth to the Decade in Russia.

According to the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs of the Russian Federation (FADN) (in Russian), some of the events of the plan will be held regularly. For example, an international conference dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous languages will take place every two years. The All-Russian Congress of Teachers of the Native Language and Literature of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East will be held every three years. Annually, the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia and the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences will conduct research on the sociolinguistic situation of Indigenous languages and scientific research on specific topics.

Projects for the preservation of Indigenous languages in Russia

Here are some examples of projects aimed at preserving Indigenous languages of Russia:

The project "Digitalization of the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic" of the UNESCO Department of the Northeastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosov. The project also collects information about Indigenous languages, recorded and published native languages TV lessons (the Yukaghir, Even, Evenk, Chukchi, and Dolgan languages), as well as other educational materials.

The "Minority Languages of Russia" (in Russian) website, based on the Laboratory of Study and Preservation of Minority Languages of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is a publicly accessible Internet information resource containing materials on the structure and use of minority languages of Russia and their local variants. The current version of the site presents materials on 162 Indigenous languages of Russia. The site provides the following information about each language: genealogy, distribution area, number of native speakers, language functioning, development dynamics, etc.

The interactive atlas of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East: Languages and Cultures (in Russian) makes you discover the culture, languages, traditions, but first and foremost, the outstanding Indigenous representatives. In the atlas, in addition to historical references, general and ethnographic information, you can find lists of fiction in the language spoken by a particular people, and watch / listen to recordings of native speakers in the media library (in Russian).

The KMNSOYUZ language portal (in Russian) publishes news about Indigenous languages. Special attention is paid to the section devoted to the digital practice of Indigenous languages (in Russian) with links to mobile applications for learning native languages and online translators, and a media library (in Russian) that contains links to cartoons, clips, audio stories and podcasts in Indigenous languages.

Children of the Arctic. This information and educational portal is designed to navigate throught the Indigenous Peoples of the North that live in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. Special attention should be paid to the YouTube project channel (in Russian), which publishes monologues of famous representatives of the Peoples of the Arctic (in Russian), i.e. philologists, craftsmen, and artists, about their lives, work, and traditions; karaoke of the Peoples of the Arctic,as well as language courses (in Russian) and cartoons.

#mother tongue #FAO #indigenous languages #International Decade of Indigenous Languages #21 february #international mother language day

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rjzimmerman · 3 years

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Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

For thousands of years Indigenous people have survived by hunting, fishing, foraging and harvesting in ways that sustain them while maintaining an equilibrium with nature.

But a major report from the United Nations warns that this balance is being severely tested by climate change and by incursions into Indigenous lands—many of them illegal. And as these food systems come under threat, the world risks losing not only the tribes, but their service as crucial protectors of biodiversity and key allies in the fight to slow global warming.

“The Indigenous food systems that have proved themselves to be resilient for hundreds of years are facing pressures. One is climate change, which is reducing wild plants, water and biodiversity,” said Yon Fernandez de Larrinoa, chief of the Indigenous Peoples Unit at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. “The other is anthropocentric pressure from agriculture and mining.”

In the report, published Friday by FAO, the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, researchers add to a plentitude of recent academic evidence showing how critical Indigenous people are to the wellbeing of the planet.

Nearly half a billion people are members of Indigenous groups, living across 90 countries and occupying more than a third of Earth’s protected land. Their residence across these territories preserves an astonishing 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

But as the resources and lands Indigenous people rely on for food are either taken from them for agriculture, mining or other resource extractions, or as climate change alters their landscapes—reducing available water or forcing shifts in animal migrations, for example—their survival and tenure on the land becomes less likely.

“They’re being forced from their homelands,” Fernandez de Larrinoa said. “What we’re seeing is these territories that used to be much larger, where they had replenishment capacity, are becoming smaller and smaller.”

#conservation #agriculture #indigenous lands

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socialscienceresearcher · 4 years

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The Compounded Struggle to Enjoy Customary Land Tenure Rights and Livelihood Security Amid COVID-19 in Shan State, Myanmar

June 29, 2020Help spread the news!

Stephen Nyein Han Tun Land Researcher and Customary Land Tenure Associate Coordinator

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is a Southeast Asian country, which is home to 135 diverse culture and language groups (Bianco, 2016) living together under a centralized government. Located along Mekong and Irrawaddy basins, it has also been tagged as “a state shaped largely by civil war” (Stokke, Vakulchuk and Øverland, 2018). This primarily is due to decades-long conflicts between the government and various ethnic/indigenous armed groups (Kramer, 2005). Most indigenous lands are located along the edges of the country, while most Burmese people live mainly in low-land areas (Kramer, 2015). Historically, indigenous peoples’ rights to customary land/tenure in Myanmar have been ignored by both the military and civilian-led government. Moreover, the Constitution does not recognize such rights.

While the world continues to battle with Covid-19, indigenous peoples in Myanmar, particularly in Shan State, have been facing compounded threats brought about by the health crisis and armed conflicts, such as lack of access to medical services, reliefs, health education. Furthermore, their customary lands are being confiscated by the State to give way for mega infrastructure concessions and large-scale land-based investments. In short, they have been denied of rights to access, withdraw, control, claim, profit, use, exclude, lease, and manage their customary land (Allaverdian, Forgerite, Scurrah and Si Thu Htike San, 2017). Food and livelihood insecurities have been aggravated by the inability to freely cultivate crops on their lands. Furthermore, farmers are not given the opportunity to access legal assistance.

On 30 March 2020, when infections were starting to get recorded in the country, the Central State permitted 1,229 mining concession projects in different regions. Around 326 concessions of these types are found in Shan State (Ministry of Resource and Natural Environmental Conservation Department, 2020). Mining capitalists have been keen to take advantage of Namatu Bawdwin mine and other places in Shan State while disregarding the rights of indigenous peoples. On 30 May 2020, Sai Wan Sai (2020) points out that a land dispute broke between the Pa’O indigenous people and Tatmadaw. The Tatmadaw confiscated around 900 acres of land of the indigenous in 2018. When the Pa’O farmers who protested were eventually arrested and sent to jail (Sai Wan Sai, 2020).

The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), a part of China’s One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI), has been accelerated by political, social, and economic changes in Myanmar. This acceleration has also been compounded by amendments to land-use policies’ mechanism as a form of State legal land dispossession politics. These policies appear in the 2008 Constitution’s basic national land regulation, 1894 Legal Land Acquisition Act of 2012 (the rights of State in land use and management), the Grants and Leases of Land at the Disposal of Government Policy in 2016 National Land Use Policy, and the 2012/2016 and 2019 Vacant-Fallow-Virgin (VFV) Land laws. Capital accumulation by the CMEC for global energy markets has threatened the customary land (tenure) and the livelihood (including women’s lives) of the Ta’ang indigenous tea farming society (Nyein Han Tun, 2019).

The National Land Use Policy of 2016 mandates the Government “to recognize and protect customary land tenure rights and procedures” (National Land Use Policy, 2016). UNDRIF Article 10 also points out that the “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their land or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option return.” However, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the current civilian government has been adamant to strengthen economic development through land and water-based investments such as seaport, Special Economic Zones, large-scale agribusinesses, highway roads, and different kinds of infrastructure development. These position and perspective prove that it is unable and unwilling to respect and protect the right of its indigenous peoples to live in dignity.

Reference:

Allaverdian, C., Julia Forgerite, Natalia Scurrah and Si Thu Htike San. (2017). Documenting Customary Tenure in Myanmar. A Guidebook. MRLG guidebook #1. Vientiane & Yangon: Mekong Region Land Governance.

Bianco, Joseph Lo. (2016). Building a National Language Policy for Myanmar: An Investment in National Development, Peace, Social Progress and Improved Education. The University of Melbourne Press.

Clements, Alan and Leslie Kean. (1995). Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity. Bangkok: White Orchid Press.

Department of Population. (2017). Census Atlas Myanmar: The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census. Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population, May Pyi Taw, Myanmar.

Dittmer, Lowell. (2010). Chapter 1 Burma vs. Myanmar, what’s in a name?”, in Lowell Dittmer (ed.) Burma or Myanmar? The Struggle for National Identity (pp. 1-20). Singapore: World Scientific Publisher.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2002). Land Tenure and Rural Development. FAO Land Tenure Studies. Rome, FAO.

Ganesan, Narayanan and Kyaw Yin Hliang (eds.). (2007). Myanmar State, Society and Ethnicity. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publishing.

Kramer, Tom. (2005). Ethnic Conflict and Dilemmas for International Engagement” in Jelsma et al. (eds.). Trouble in the Triangle: Opium and Conflict in Burma. Silkworm Books.

Kramer, Tom. (2015). Ethnic Conflicts and Land Rights in Myanmar. Social Research 82 (2): 355-374.

National Land Use Policy. (2016). The Republic of the Union of Myanmar: National Land Use Policy. Retrieved from http://extwprlegs1.fao.org/docs/pdf/mya152783.pdf

Nyein Han Tun. (2019). Ta’ang Tea Farmers and Customary Land Dispossession in the Context of China-Myanmar Economic Corridor in Northeast Myanmar. Master of Arts in Social Science (Development Studies) Thesis. Chiang Mai University, Northern Thailand.

Ministry of Resource and Natural Environmental Conservation Department. (2020). Retrieved from http://www.mining.gov.mm/News_mm/default.asp?page=1

Sai Wansai. (2020). Military Land Confiscation: Major obstacle for ethnic traditional land ownership. Retrieved from https://www.bnionline.net/en/news/military-land-confiscation-major-obstacle-ethnic-traditional-land-ownership

Stokke, Kristian, Roman Vakulchuk and Indra Øverland. (2018). Myanmar: A Political Economy Analysis. Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Original Link:

https://shapesea.com/op-ed/covid-19/the-compounded-struggle-to-enjoy-customary-land-tenure-rights-and-livelihood-security-amid-covid-19-in-shan-state-myanmar/

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nedsecondline · 7 years

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When Women Have Land Rights, the Tide Begins to Turn

Women's secure tenure rights lead to several positive development outcomes for them and their families, including resilience to climate change shocks, economic productivity, food security, health, and education. Here a young tribal woman works shoulder to shoulder with her husband planting rice saplings in India's Rayagada province. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena NEW DELHI, Jun 12 2017 (IPS)

In Meghalaya, India’s northeastern biodiversity hotspot, all three major tribes are matrilineal. Children take the mother’s family name, while daughters inherit the family lands.

Because women own land and have always decided what is grown on it and what is conserved, the state not only has a strong climate-resistant food system but also some of the rarest edible and medicinal plants, researchers said.The importance of protecting the full spectrum of women’s property rights becomes even more urgent as the number of women-led households in rural areas around the world continues to grow.

While their ancient culture empowers Meghalaya’s indigenous women with land ownership that vastly improves their resilience to the food shocks climate change springs on them, for an overwhelming majority of women in developing countries, culture does not allow them even a voice in family or community land management. Nor do national laws support their rights to own the very land they sow and harvest to feed their families.

Legal protections for indigenous and rural women to own and manage property are inadequate or missing in 30 low- and middle-income countries, according to a new report from Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

This finding, now quantified, means that much of the recent progress that indigenous and local communities have gained in acquiring legal recognition of their commonly held territory could be built on shaky ground.

“Generally speaking, international legal protections for indigenous and rural women’s tenure rights have yet to be reflected in the national laws that regulate women’s daily interactions with community forests,” Stephanie Keene, Tenure Analyst for the RRI, a global coalition working for forest land and resources rights of indigenous and local communities, told IPS via an email interview.

Together these 30 countries contain three-quarters of the developing world’s forests, which remain critical to mitigate global warming and natural disasters, including droughts and land degradation.

In South Asia, distress migration owing to climate events and particularly droughts is high, as over three-quarters of the population is dependent on agriculture, out of which more than half are subsistence farmers depending on rains for irrigation.

“For many indigenous people, it is the women who are the food producers and who manage their customary lands and forests. Safeguarding their rights will cement the rights of their communities to collectively own the lands and forests they have protected and depended on for generations.” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Indigenous and local communities in the ten analyzed Asian countries provide the most consistent recognition of women’s community-level inheritance rights. However, this regional observation is not seen in India and Nepal, where inadequate laws concerning inheritance and community-level dispute resolution cause women’s forest rights to be particularly vulnerable,” Keene told IPS of the RRI study.

“None of the 5 legal frameworks analyzed in Nepal address community-level inheritance or dispute resolution. Although India’s Forest Rights Act does recognize the inheritability of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ land, the specific rights of women to community-level inheritance and dispute resolution are not explicitly acknowledged. Inheritance in India may be regulated by civil, religious or personal laws, some of which fail to explicitly guarantee equal inheritance rights for wives and daughters,” Keene added.

Desertification, the silent, invisible crisis, threatens one-third of global land area. This photo taken in 2013 records efforts to green portions of the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh largest in China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Pointing out challenges behind the huge gaps in women’s land rights under international laws and rights recognized by South Asian governments, Madhu Sarin, who was involved in drafting of India’s Forest Rights Act and now pushes for its implementation, told IPS, “Where governments have ratified international conventions, they do in principle agree to make national laws compatible with them. However, there remains a huge gap between such commitments and their translation into practice. Firstly, most governments don’t have mechanisms or binding requirements in place for ensuring such compatibility.”

“Further, the intended beneficiaries of gender-just laws remain unorganised and unaware about them,” she added.

Women’s land rights, recurring droughts and creeping desertification

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), one way to address droughts that cause more deaths and displaces more people than any other natural disaster, and to halt desertification – the silent, invisible crisis that threatens one-third of global land area – is to bring about pressing legal reforms to establish gender parity in farm and forest land ownership and its management.

“Poor rural women in developing countries are critical to the survival of their families. Fertile land is their lifeline. But the number of people negatively affected by land degradation is growing rapidly. Crop failures, water scarcity and the migration of traditional crops are damaging rural livelihoods. Action to halt the loss of more fertile land must focus on households. At this level, land use is based on the roles assigned to men and women. This is where the tide can begin to turn,” says Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, in its 2017 study.

Closing the gender gap in agriculture alone would increase yields on women’s farms by 20 to 30 percent and total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, the study quotes the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as saying.

Why the gender gap must close in farm and forest rights

The reality on the ground is, however, not even close to approaching this gender parity so essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 5 which connect directly with land rights.

Climate change is ushering in new population dynamics. As men’s out-migration from indigenous and local communities continues to rise due to fall in land productivity, population growth and increasing outside opportunities for wage-labor, more women are left behind as de facto land managers, assuming even greater responsibilities in communities and households.

The importance of protecting the full spectrum of women’s property rights becomes even more urgent as the number of women-led households in rural areas around the world continues to grow. The percentage of female-led households is increasing in half of the world’s 15 largest countries by population, including India and Pakistan.

Although there is no updated data on the growth of women-led households, the policy research group International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in its 2014 study found that from 2000 to 2010, slightly less than half of the world’s urban population growth could be ascribed to migration. The contribution of migration is considerably higher in Asia, it found, where urbanisation is almost 60 percent and is expected to continue growing, although at a declining rate.”

“Unless women have equal standing in all laws governing indigenous lands, their communities stand on fragile ground,” cautioned Tauli-Corpuz.

Without legal protections for women, community lands are vulnerable to theft and exploitation that threatens the world’s tropical forests that form a critical bulwark against climate change, as well as efforts to eradicate poverty among rural communities.

With the increasing onslaught of large industries on community lands worldwide, tenure rights of women are fundamental to their continued cultural identity and natural resource governance, according to the RRI study.

“When women’s rights to access, use, and control community forests and resources are insecure, and especially when women’s right to meaningfully participate in community-level governance decisions is not respected, their ability to fulfill substantial economic and cultural responsibilities are compromised, causing entire families and communities to suffer,” said Keene.

Moreover, several studies have established that women are differently and disproportionately affected by community-level shocks such as climate change, natural disasters, conflict and large-scale land acquisitions, further underscoring the fortification of women’s land rights an urgent priority.

With growing feminization of farming as men out-migrate, and the rise in women’s education, gender-inequitable tenure practices cannot be sustained over time, the RRI study concludes. But achieving gender equity in land rights will call for tremendous political will and societal change, particularly in patriarchal South Asia, researchers said.

The Relentless March of Drought – That ‘Horseman of the Apocalypse’

Business Unusual: Valuing Water for a Sustainable Future

Falling Between the Sun-Scorched Gaps: Drought Highlights Ethiopia’s IDP Dilemma

#WorldNews

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