Check against delivery Nairobi, 5 August 1999 - The
commemoration of the International Day of the World's Indigenous
People every year is a day to focus our attention on the unique
circumstances of indigenous societies throughout the world and
the importance of indigenous cultures to the global community.
It is a day to foster greater appreciation, understanding and
respect for the cultural, political, social, religious and
economic rights of the world's indigenous people. An estimated
300 million indigenous people inhabit more than 70 countries
worldwide. They live in a wide range of ecosystems -from polar
regions and deserts to the savannahs and tropical forests. There
is a remarkable overlap between the global mappings of world's
areas of biological megadiversity and areas of high cultural and
linguistic diversity. Unfortunately, these areas of biological
megadiversity are the ones in which biodiversity loss has been
the most dramatic. These areas host the world's highest
concentrations of linguistically a