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Indigenous peoples have historically been the poorest and most excluded populations in many parts of the world. They have suffered serious discriminations in terms of their basic rights to land, resources, language, culture, citizenship, access to basic services as well as the denial of essential conditions to lead a healthy and satisfying life.
The main objective of this thematic group is to investigate how the capability approach can be applied in the context of indigenous issues, at the theoretical and practical level. At the theoretical level, we intend to explore how the capability approach can be applied as a theoretical framework to analyse indigenous peoples' rights and well-being. At the practical level, we propose to investigate whether and to what extent the capability approach can contribute to further indigenous holistic concept of development in the design, implementation and evaluation of development policies.
The research activities aim to investigate not only individual capabilities but also better understand and value capabilities that are shared by a social group or community. The group emphasizes the use of participatory research methods to enable indigenous peoples to fully participate in any research activities in order to allow them to define their priorities (set of capabilities) for their self-defined human development.