The UN Special Rapporteur on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNSRIP) issued a call for submission to different stakeholders for inputs to its report on ‘Impact of Covid-19 on Indigenous Peoples’.

The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), in collaboration with its members and partners, appreciates the opportunity to contribute to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the General Assembly: Impact of Covid-19 on Indigenous Peoples.

This submission draws upon the collaborative work of the submitting organisations which participated in the Feminist Participatory Action Research on Women’s Land Rights (Land FPAR ), particularly highlighting the stories and analysis of indigenous women from Nagaland (Northeast India), Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Samoa on indigenous women’s situation amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Women in Asia and the Pacific bear the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic as they face multiple and intersecting discrimination, exclusion and violence. Feminist movements across the region have reported significant lack of access to adequate and accurate information as well as governments’ failure to deliver on their state obligation, and meet peoples’ basic needs, and their arbitrary use of military power to enforce curfews and lockdowns.

Please click here to download a copy of the submission.