A/HRC/30/41 rights, which exposes them to risks of displacement, expropriation and exploitation. Indigenous peoples inherent the right to the land that they traditionally occupy and use. They often do not hold formal titles to their land and their right to such land is one of the rights most violated. That allows Governments to impose destructive development projects or to lease and sell indigenous land without obtaining their free, prior and informed consent. Large-scale economic projects have been constructed on indigenous lands. Additionally, mass tourism has been encouraged in areas that are of significance to indigenous peoples. The implementation of those projects has repeatedly caused forced displacement and migration, ecological degradation and armed conflicts. Furthermore, the commodification of land that is inherent in such practices is an assault on indigenous cultures and the importance placed on land. 16. Land appropriation is not gender neutral and indigenous women’s rights interact with violations of collective land rights. In indigenous communities where matriarchy and matrilineal practices exist, the loss of land will likewise undermine indigenous women’s status and roles. The gendered effects of those violations become manifest in situations where indigenous women lose their traditional livelihoods, such as food gathering, agricultural production, herding, among others, while compensation and jobs following land seizure tend to benefit male members of indigenous communities. The loss of land and exclusion of women can create vulnerability to abuse and violence, such as sexual violence, exploitation and trafficking. Additionally, the secondary effects of violations of land rights, such as loss of livelihood and ill health, often disproportionally impact women in their roles of caregivers and guardians of the local environment. 17. External threats to indigenous land rights are not the only cause of abuses of women’s rights in relation to land. The roles that women hold within indigenous communities and the way that some indigenous property frameworks reflect patriarchal power structures. Indigenous women commonly experience significant barriers to holding and inheriting land. especially when they are widowed. B. Economic, social and cultural rights Poverty 18. Indigenous peoples account for 5 per cent of the world’s population, while representing 15 per cent of those living in poverty. As many as 33 per cent of all people living in extreme rural poverty globally are from indigenous communities. 2 Those figures are particularly alarming given the wealth of natural resources that are located within indigenous territories. That level of poverty is a violation of indigenous people’s rights to development, as well as their economic and social rights to an adequate standard of living, housing, food, water, health and education. Such poverty is deeply interrelated with abuses of land and self-determination. The denial of self-determination in relation to development pathways and control over natural resources is also a central causal factor in the prevalence of poverty among indigenous communities. It is related to and mutually reinforced by the exclusion of indigenous people’s perspective and agency from dominant development paradigms. 19. High unemployment is an important issue in relation to the poverty experienced by indigenous communities, as indigenous peoples are disproportionally represented within the world’s unemployed. When indigenous people are employed they often face wage 2 6 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Sustaining human progress: reducing vulnerabilities and building resistance, Human Development Report 2014, p. 3.

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