Walter Flores of CEGSS, Guatemala opened the plenary discussion by stating the objectives and all the participants had the opportunity to present their current practice by discussing the following set of questions:
What are the most relevant demands or struggles in my community/territory?
What is our current practice around health accountability and success we have achieved?
What are our current challenges?
The session was then chaired by Ariel Frisancho from CMMB, Peru, who gave a short introduction to the theme. He spoke about the need to focus on the indigenous communities across the world. The indigenous communities he emphasised are unique and their total population is 370 million in 70 countries; significantly they all have a common history of struggle, oppression and discrimination. He also pointed out that the focus should also be on the marginalised population such as the Dalits in India and the Roma community as they thrive in similar situations although they are from different geographic contexts and therefore have a common issues. It is generally seen that indigenous communities have poor health indicators in comparison to non-indigenous community and indigenous community even in developed countries face similar problems. Level of exclusion is visible regardless of how rich or poor the countries are. Read more...
