Malaysia has declared its vision of developed country status by the year 2020. Much has been written about its top-down development approach, its relative economic success and the social as well as environmental costs of such approach. In 2011 and 2012 the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) set into motion a national inquiry into the status of customary rights to land in the country. As part of the inquiry, a nationwide series of consultations was held over several months in 2012, culminating in formal public hearings in Peninsular Malyasia, Sarawak and Sabah.

Internationally there are an alarming number of violations of indigenous peoples’ land and human rights. Brazil is currently under the spotlight as the heightening of the political crisis that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff brings national and international concerns over the uncertainty related to changes in policy that may be adopted by the interim Government in relation to indigenous peoples land rights.

This crucial report demonstrates how states and other actors are using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to roll back social and environmental safeguards. In doing so, they are eroding the rights of indigenous peoples in the five most tropically forested countries of the world

The webinar Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the name of COVID-19, organized by Forest Peoples Programme, the Tenure Facility,  Middlesex University, the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and the Land Portal Foundation, took place on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

Global leaders increasingly recognize that land rights for indigenous and local communities are a prerequisite for achieving national and international goals for forest governance, food security, climate mitigation, economic development and human rights.

The Indigenous Navigator is a framework and set of tools for and by indigenous peoples to systematically monitor the level of recognition and implementation of their rights. By using the Indigenous Navigator, indigenous organisations and communities, duty bearers, NGOs and journalists can access free tools and resources based on community-generated data.

This toolkit contains a series of information notes explaining different aspects of the Inter-American human rights system. It is designed to help indigenous women and their advocates to use the system effectively.

In Cameroon, commercial and infrastructural developments are exerting increasing pressure on land and natural resources, which is in turn exacerbating the risks to the rights of indigenous peoples. Against this backdrop, the ongoing process of revising Cameroon’s land legislation provides an opportunity to secure aspects of indigenous peoples’ rights, as part of a wider effort to secure the land rights of local communities.

This report highlights the importance and urgency for climate action initiatives of protecting the forests of the indigenous and tribal territories1 and the communities that look after them. Based on recent experience, it proposes a package of investments and policies for climate funders and government decision-makers to adopt, in coordination with the indigenous and tribal peoples.

El propósito de este informe es dejar en claro la importancia y urgencia para la acción climática de proteger a los bosques de los territorios indígenas y tribales y a las comunidades que los cuidan. Con base en la experiencia reciente, se propone un conjunto de inversiones y políticas para ser adoptadas por los financiadores climáticos y decisores gubernamentales, en coordinación con los pueblos indígenas y tribales.

Indigenous and tribal peoples control about one third of Latin America and the Caribbean’s forests. Supporting their efforts to control, sustainably manage, and benefit from these forests can greatly help to solve the problems of climate change, loss of biological and cultural diversity, rural vulnerability, and food insecurity.

This paper reports on research conducted for the Indigenous Land Corporation, an Australian government agency concerned with the acquisition and management of lands for indigenous peoples. The paper seeks to identify and analyze the kinds of institutional arrangements that might be deployed to support indigenous communities in the management of indigenous-owned land. It is concerned with a particular planning context in which the role of state agencies is focused on supporting and facilitating the work of indigenous landowners.

Declines in global biodiversity due to land conversion and habitat loss are driving a "Sixth Mass Extinction" and many countries currently fall short of meeting even nominal land protection targets to mitigate this crisis. Here, we quantify the potential contribution of Indigenous lands to biodiversity conservation using case studies of Australia, Brazil and Canada. Indigenous lands in each country are slightly more species rich than existing protected areas and, in Brazil and Canada, support more threatened species than existing protected areas or random sites.