Indigenous Injustices: Responding to Environmental Violence in Southeast Asia

• In Event: Responding to Challenges and Threats to Indigenous Communities

Abstract

In recent decades, the rush towards rapid development in Southeast Asia has led to a marked rise in cases of social and environmental injustices. With an explosion of large infrastructure projects, land grabs, natural resources exploitation and the creation of protected conservation areas, there have also been pronounced adverse effects on the livelihood, health and well-being of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and others living in forests and in areas encroached by new development zones. Indigenous peoples throughout the region have experienced displacement, cultural loss and even murder. This paper examines these trends and how transnational advocacy networks and global coalitions have tried to respond to them at the global and regional levels. With fewer formal regional mechanisms for human rights than those found in Latin American and Africa, transnational networks in Southeast Asia have tended to appeal to global institutions and processes and/or have targeted international financial institutions (IFIs) dominated by Western donors. Such strategies have so far seen only limited success, however, and the paper explores the various challenges of organizing indigenous voices in this region, both at the national as well as the transnational/global level.

Author

• Kim D. Reimann, Georgia State University