The unique cultures of minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide – spanning a wide variety of customs and practices – are under threat. This year’s edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of their identity, including language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality. But while the effects of this attrition can be devastating, minority and indigenous cultures have also been critical in strengthening communities and providing activists with a platform to fight for their rights. As this volume illustrates, ensuring that the cultural freedoms of minorities and indigenous peoples are protected is essential if their other rights are also to be respected.

In a context of rapid growth, an increasing proportion of minorities and indigenous peoples are now living in urban areas. But while they offer the possibility of greater freedoms, improved livelihoods and more equitable opportunities, cities often magnify existing patterns of discrimination and insecurity. This year's edition of State of the world's minorities and indigenous peoples explores the many challenges communities face in urban areas, from segregation and lack of services to targeted violence and exclusion. Nevertheless, the volume also includes numerous cases of minorities and indigenous peoples achieving better social and political outcomes for themselves in cities, as well as examples of the substantial benefits their inclusion can bring to the entire urban population.

Globalization and “Minority” Cultures: The Role of “Minor” Cultural Groups in Shaping Our Global Future is a collective work which brings to the forefront of global studies new perspectives on the relationship between globalization and the experiences of cultural minorities worldwide.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Development in Asia faces a crucial issue: the right of indigenous peoples to build a better life while protecting their ancestral lands and cultural identity. An intimate relationship with land expressed in communal ownership has shaped and sustained these cultures over time. But now, public and private enterprises encroach upon indigenous peoples' traditional domains, extracting minerals and timber, and building dams and roads. Displaced in the name of progress, indigenous peoples find their identities diminished, their livelihoods gone. Using case studies from Cambodia, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines, nine experts examine vulnerabilities and opportunities of indigenous peoples. Debunking the notion of tradition as an obstacle to modernization, they find that those who keep control of their communal lands are the ones most able to adapt.

This is the first book that documents poverty systematically for the world's indigenous peoples in developing regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The volume compiles results for roughly 85 percent of the world's indigenous peoples. It draws on nationally representative data to compare trends in countries' poverty rates and other social indicators with those for indigenous sub-populations and provides comparable data for a wide range of countries all over the world. It estimates global poverty numbers and analyzes other important development indicators, such as schooling, health, and social protection. Provocatively, the results show a marked difference in results across regions, with rapid poverty reduction among indigenous (and non-indigenous) populations in Asia contrasting with relative stagnation - and in some cases falling back - in Latin America and Africa. Two main factors motivate the book. First, there is a growing concern among poverty analysts worldwide that countries with significant vulnerable populations - such as indigenous peoples - may not meet the Millennium Development Goals, and thus there exists a consequent need for better data tracking conditions among these groups. Second, there is a growing call by indigenous organizations, including the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, for solid, disaggregated data analyzing the size and causes of the "development gap."

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.