Indigenous children are one of the world's most vulnerable groups, at greater risk of death and abuse, and with less access to education and health care than other young people, a UN agency said on Wednesday.
There are around 300 million indigenous people world-wide, ranging from Australian Aborigines and Bolivian Guarani to Siberian Nenet, the children's agency Unicef said at the world launch of a report highlighting the barriers they face.
"The idea of the report really is to go out and shine light on the invisible Indigenous children are among the most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor," Unicef Executive Director Carol Bellamy told Reuters in an interview in Madrid.
The report aimed to raise public awareness and challenge governments to act, she said.
Indigenous people lived in an area before the dominant population arrived, have a distinct cultural identity and have been marginalised or discriminated against.
"Indigenous children generally have lower vaccination rates and higher mortality rates, lower rates of school enrolment, higher rates of drop-out, and inadequate protection in formal justice systems," Unicef said in a statement.
Often they are more vulnerable than their peers, whether they live in rich countries like Canada or poor ones like Cambodia, the report said.
Many indigenous children do not even officially exist because their births are not registered with authorities, which can put them more at risk of exclusion and abuse later in life. Bellamy is keen to see this change.
"Birth registration is incredibly important. If you have to start somewhere - exist!" she said.
She urged governments to tackle the children's problems through programmes that help them develop their cultural identity without isolating them from the wider population.
Nomadic schools, which allow Siberia's Nenet people to follow their reindeer herds while learning to read and write, are one of the schemes Unicef promotes as an example.
Another is a Peruvian childbirth scheme that helps midwives combine traditions like returning the placenta to the earth with modern practices to protect the health of mother and baby.
The report, by Unicef's Italy-based Innocenti Research Centre, says governments need to keep accurate statistics about indigenous communities, encourage them to participate in government and create laws that protect their rights.
AUSTRALIAN RIOTS: The challenges indigenous people face have been highlighted in Australia recently by the rioting and national soul-searching that followed the death of an Aboriginal teenager who was impaled on a steel fence post after falling from a bicycle.
Relatives and community leaders said Thomas Hickey was being chased by police. Police strongly deny the accusation.
Bellamy said the riots could serve as a warning to other governments about the cost of social exclusion.
Aborigines suffer imprisonment, illness, alcoholism and welfare dependency rates far higher than white Australians.
"I don't think riots have to be inevitable, but I also think government and society have to respond in some of these cases to understand that there are responsibilities to try and bring the entire family into some basic level of services," she said.
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