Asia Indigenous Youth Platform (AIYP)

Indigenous Youths in the Asia are facing a time of key life transitions and uncertainty about the future. In addition to navigating these new aspects of life, young people from indigenous communities face a range of unique social and cultural challenges. Indigenous communities often live in remote locations with less access to modern education, health and other services than mainstream peoples/ their countrymen, and continuity of cultural practices and identity is intimately connected to belonging to a community. Formal decision-making and governance structures are often led by a group of chosen leaders who are informally advised by wise elders in the community. Most decisions and programs are influenced by popular opinion and the youth (boys and girls), including children, take active part in the implementation of the community’s programs and activities. However, their customary institutions are in mutilated forms due to varied reasons such as invasion, occupation, militarization, development aggression, assimilation, political domination and imposition of state structures, etc. These institutional challenges have produced extreme conditions where the whole community often go through or are experiencing collective trauma and internalization of victimhood and violence affecting the children, youth and women the most. So. to deal with the emerged youth issues, AIPP in collaboration with UNESCO and UNDP established Asia Indigenous Youth Platform during the Regional Youth Leadership Training and Youth Conference in the presence of 45 indigenous youths from Nepal, Bangladesh, Mainland India, Northeast India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Philippines on 5-12 June 2019 in Chiangmai.