A/60/358 urban population. This has various results: a lack of school facilities or, if they do exist, inferior physical conditions; a shortage of teachers and insufficient teacher training; a lack of suitable teaching materials; curricula that are not adapted to the cultural realities of those communities; unmet linguistic needs; and so on. These and other problems result in high dropout rates among indigenous children, especially girls, and a progressive decrease in the number of indigenous students in secondary and higher education. Thus, indigenous young people do not have sufficient skills to compete with their non-indigenous peers in the job market and are often inadequately prepared to face the economic and social development challenges of their own communities. The Special Rapporteur recommends that action to address this problem be a cornerstone of the programmes launched within the context of the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. 53. The Special Rapporteur urges that culturally appropriate indigenous education be given the priority it deserves, both nationally, in public programmes and budgets, and internationally, by international agencies responsible for promoting development and reducing poverty, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 54. Indigenous education must urgently be improved in both quantity and quality. Indigenous people require not merely education, but education which is suited to their specific cultural and social characteristics. The participation of indigenous communities in designing, implementing and evaluating educational programmes and projects is essential. If poverty reduction policies are to have a long-term impact, progress in primary education is not sufficient; efforts must also be augmented in the areas of secondary and higher education. 55. Such an approach can greatly help to ensure that new generations of indigenous children and youth are not excluded from the benefits of economic, social and human development to which they are entitled and to which they would have access were they not actively or passively denied the full enjoyment of all their human rights. 56. Confronted with poverty and with educational services which fail to ensure their full right to education, indigenous people have not been mere observers; they have used their creativity, imagination and skills to overcome these obstacles and promote social and cultural development in their communities. Many of these efforts have had interesting results, which should be carefully assessed. In working towards attaining the Millennium Development Goals, it is crucial to draw on the experience of indigenous peoples, who have generally been excluded from decision-making processes concerning education policy. C. Armed conflicts, human rights and indigenous peoples 57. In all countries where armed conflicts are occurring or have occurred on indigenous territories (Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to cite only the most familiar cases), indigenous populations suffer from injustices related to repeated violations of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and to a constant failure to observe the laws and customs of war applicable to internal armed conflicts, or international humanitarian law. Information received by the Special Rapporteur suggests that the perpetrators of such violations include both non-State actors and 14