Indigenous children
Letter n°14, May 2004

At the end of the International Decade for Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004), UNICEF’s Innocenti Centre has recently published a descriptive study entitled “Ensuring the rights of indigenous children”. From the Greek words “autos” and “khtôn”, the French word for indigenous, “autochtone” means belonging to oneself, inherent, living in the same place.

It is estimated that there are 300 million indigenous people in the world and of the more than 6,000 registered languages, approximately three-quarters are spoken by indigenous groups.

 

The authors of the report affirm that indigenous children constitute one of the most disadvantaged groups, and their rights – notably to survival and development, to the highest standards of health, to education that respects their cultural identity and to protection against abuse, violence and exploitation – are often flouted.

The report stresses that the frequent lack of coherent and precise data on these children also contributes to making this group " invisible " or marginalized. It goes on to state that at the same time indigenous children possess very special resources: they are the custodians of a multitude of cultures, languages, beliefs and knowledge-systems that represent a precious part of our collective heritage.

Indigenous children have a very low level of education, and illiteracy is the direct consequence. One of the principle factors for educational exclusion, it is said, is that the programmes and methods of instruction are not culturally adapted or that the children have not mastered the language of instruction.

Although still marginalized, some socio-educational approaches for integrating these children have been developed here and there in the world. Fundamental to a number of them are the necessity that the parents participate in their children’s education, the inclusion of indigenous languages in the curriculum, literacy programmes for adults, the adaptation of the school calendar to the traditional activities of the families as well as the financing of initiatives by the public authorities so as to assure their continuity.

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