Budapest, Hungary. 

The European Roma Rights Centre filed today an application with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on behalf of 184 Romani residents of camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in northern Kosovo.

On December 18, 2005 Bolivians made history at the polls, as 54 percent of the country’s voters chose Evo Morales, an indigenous Aimara leader of the combative coca-growers’ unions, to become president.

Morales and his party, the Movement to Socialism (MAS), swept the elections in the first round with an absolute majority, trouncing competitors on the right: one a cement mogul and fast food franchise owner, the other a businessman-economist cultivated by the United States as its preferred choice.

The International Training Center of Indigenous Peoples is currently seeking indigenous applicants for its July training in Nuuk, Greenland. The two-week intensive session, conducted entirely in English, will be focused on strengthening participants’ deeper understanding of the many international legal instruments, covenants, and organizations that impact indigenous peoples. Limited funding is available for international travel, however each participant is responsible for funding their own visa and travel within their home country.

On January 26, 2005 the Damara community issued a press statement asking Germany to be held accountable for the lives of 17,000 Damara killed in the Namibian genocide between 1904 and 1907. Damara feel that they need to make their voices heard because discussions of the German genocide in Namibia have largely focused on the Herero. The statement also called on the German government to return the head of Damara warrior /Haihab //Guruseb for reburial.

On October 4, Amnesty International released a report that accuses Canadian officials of being unable to protect aboriginal women from violent attacks in Canada. According to Canadian government statistics, indigenous Canadian women between the ages of 25 and 44 are five times more likely than all other Canadian women to die of violence. The Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), an aggregate of organizations representing First Nations and Métis women, estimates that 500 aboriginal women have gone missing over the past 30 years in Canada.

More than 1,000 indigenous people and indigenous rights advocates are gathered at the United Nations in New York City for the third session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

An important forum entitled “Mapping for Indigenous Advocacy and Empowerment” is to be held in Vancouver, Canada from March 11-14. The International Forum on Indigenous Mapping is aimed primarily at indigenous leaders, elders, communityrepresentatives, and technicians who produce maps to secure the control, use, and protection of their land and resources, and to maintain centuries-old cultural knowledge.

At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Over 1,500 delegates converged on the New York headquarters of the United Nations this week for the second session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Indigenous representatives, representatives of member states, and officials from international institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization met daily in Conference Room Two for six hours each day to wrestle with the issues of economic and social development, the environment and the methods of work of the Forum itself.