Indigenous groups from around the world agreed to a sweeping list of demands to their home countries and the UN to take their interests into account in the push to spread education and eradicate poverty.
The demands were adopted Friday at the end of a two-week forum in a colorful scene in a cavernous UN chamber: Turban-clad tribesmen from the Sahara mingled with Buddhist monks in saffron robes, who sat across from ethnic Quechua in conical hats draped with puffy pink and blue tassels.
The forum focused on two key UN development goals for 2015 -- cutting in half the number of people living in extreme poverty and achieving universal primary education. Reaching the goals will be high on the agenda at a summit of world leaders called by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in September.
Indigenous groups wanted to make sure that governments don't rob them of their culture and history -- or their right to speak their own language -- in efforts to achieve the goals. They also called for national and international action to address ongoing human rights violations against native peoples.
Participants in the forum hailed the demands as the strongest of their kind for indigenous groups.
"This mainstreams us into the UN system," said Ina Hume, a native of Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, a mostly tribal region that borders India and Myanmar.
Indigenous groups also must confront challenges that may not occur to city dwellers -- isolation, lack of birth certificates or other documentation, and the insistence that they keep indigenous names or dress.
The relative ease with which the recommendations passed was a marked counterpoint to the failure of a conference occurring at the same time at the UN to toughen global controls on nuclear arms.
The only major dispute was whether to condemn the World Bank for a new policy on indigenous issues that would seek to consult with indigenous peoples rather than strive to get their consent. In the end, the final document largely avoided the issue and left out the most controversial language.
The conference began with UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette urging the 1,500 native leaders and activists to draw up concrete plans that would "point the way toward measurable improved standards of living and greater respect for human rights."
Officials acknowledged that with some estimate putting the number of indigenous people at over 200 million in more than 70 countries, more needs to be done to include indigenous peoples' organizations in efforts to alleviate poverty and improve education.
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