A/76/202
overrepresented among the working poor. 27 According to ILO, indigenous peoples
represent only 27.9 per cent of global wage and salaried workers, compared with
49.1 per cent of their non-indigenous counterparts, and when they are engaged in
wage and salaried work they tend to earn less. 28 ILO also estimates that indigenous
peoples are 20 per cent more likely to be in the informal economy than the
non-indigenous population. Indigenous women are especially vulnerable to exploitation
as underpaid domestic workers, 29 in some cases receiving less than half of the legal
minimum wage. 30 Barriers to employment and wealth generation can also stem from
a lack of access to health and disability services. 31
2.
Housing
22. The income disparities and economic marginalization experienced by indigenous
peoples are often due to land dispossession and forced evictions, which, in turn, result
in housing insecurity. Indigenous peoples who migrate to urban areas disproportionately
live in substandard housing that is neither traditional nor culturally adequate. Reports
indicate that a significant segment of the urban indigenous population lives in
marginalized areas and informal settlements with limited access to basic services such
as sanitation, drinking water and public transportation. 32 Many indigenous households
do not own their urban homes 33 and are vulnerable to forced evictions with no
enforceable rights to due process, which leads to homelessness and extreme pove rty. 34
23. In Latin America, 36 per cent of indigenous peoples in urban areas are reported
to live in poor neighbourhoods. They tend to live in extreme poverty and unsafe and
unhealthy conditions, with limited access to water and sanitation, in addition t o being
vulnerable to natural disasters. 35
24. The Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an
adequate standard of living, and the right to non -discrimination in this context,
reported that, in Canada, 25 per cent of reserves had substandard water/sewage
systems and more than 10,000 on-reserve homes were without indoor plumbing. In
that context, that mandate holder also reported that there were 75 per cent of Canadian
reserves with contaminated water and referred to the case of the Attawapiskat
community, which declared “a state of emergency because of toxic chemical levels in
the water”. 36
25. That mandate holder has documented examples of indigenous peoples living in
inadequate housing in urban areas. In Indonesia, the kampung (village) is a densely
populated indigenous urban settlement mostly inhabited by low -income populations.
__________________
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
21-10081
ILO, Implementing the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 , p. 20;
submission by the Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health, University of Hawaii at
Manoa (March 2021); and Minerva C. Rivas Velarde, Indigenous Persons with Disabilities:
Access to Training and Employment (Geneva, ILO, 2015), p. 28.
ILO, Implementing the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 .
E/C.19/2021/6, paras. 12 and 21.
A/HRC/30/41.
Rivas Velarde, Indigenous Persons with Disabilities, p. 28.
A/74/183; E/C.19/2021/6; A/HRC/EMRIP/2019/2/Rev.1; and information provided by the Office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Brazil and the Consejo Nacional para
la Igualdad de Pueblos y Nacionalidades (virtual consultations).
UN-Habitat, Housing Indigenous Peoples Living in Cities, p. 25; submission by the UNICEF
Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office, UNICEF country offices in Bolivia (Plurinational
State of), Brazil and Guyana and UNICEF New Zealand, p. 10; and E/C.19/2021/6, para. 9.
A/74/183, paras. 25–26 and 37; E/C.19/2021/6, para. 20; and Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, Situation of Human Rights of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the
Pan-Amazon Region (OAS/Ser.L./V/II, 2019).
ECLAC, Guaranteeing Indigenous People’s Rights in Latin America; and A/74/183, paras. 11–13.
A/74/183, paras. 11–13 and 15.
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