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Definition of Tribe: A tribe is a social group which claims to pre-date the formation of government and is reflective of a life that is more "natural," self-sufficient, fluid, and mobile. Archaeologists and anthropologists believe that tribes sprang into existence wherever there were plentiful resources yet unpredictable environments.1 The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals Overview Asian tribal groups and their problems: Asian tribal peoples are usually minorities and see themselves as distinct from the mainstream. They speak their own languages, are largely self-sufficient, and their economies are tightly bound to their intimate relationship with their land. Their culture is different from the mainstream, inherited from their forebears and adapted to their current situation. They have often lived on their land for thousands of years. Beyond this, it is very difficult to generalise about the tribal peoples in Asia. They encompass a huge variety of tribes, living very different ways of life in an incredible diversity of environments. They include: - herders in arctic Siberia -cultivators in the rugged hills of Thailand and Bangladesh and the forests of Malaysia. - hunter-gatherers across the continent, from frozen Siberia to the tropical Andaman Islands.

Andamanese tribes: The Andaman Islands lie 700 miles off the east coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal. They are made up of 500 separate islands, of which just 27 are inhabited.2 The Andamans are home to four tribes the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese.

All four are what anthropologists call Negrito, very little is known about the lifestyle of the largely uncontacted Jarawa and Sentinelese.3
1

Helm, J. (Ed.) (1968). Essays on the Problem of Tribe. Seattle: Univ. of WA Press. Perrie Evald, the Andaman islanders,1990

We do know that all four tribes are nomadic hunter-gatherers, hunting wild pig and monitor lizard and catching fish with bows and arrows. They also collect honey, roots and berries from the forest. The Andaman tribes have a long history of hostility to outsiders and to each other.4

Onge tribe in Andaman: The only remaining rainforest in the Andaman Islands is inhabited by the tribal people. This is no coincidence without their forest the Andaman tribes cannot survive, and were it not for the presence of these tribes the rainforest would almost certainly have already been destroyed by more than 85% in the hundred years from 1901.5 Like the Anamneses, the once independent and self-sufficient Onge have been made dependent on the administration. The Indian government established a plantation in which they attempted to force the tribe to work as payment for food and housing a form of bonded labour6, close to slavery but the Onge have largely refused to work in the plantation, and the government has had to continue to give them rations. As with all the Andaman tribes, the Onge, though regarded as primitives in need of civilising, are experts at living in their rainforest home.

Jawara tribes in Andaman: Jarawa means strangers or the other people in the Andamanese language; the people we call the Jarawa are believed to call themselves Ya-eng-nga. Unlike the Onge and Great Andamanese, they remained voluntarily isolated from the settlers on their islands for nearly 150 years.7 In 1974, the Indian government began holding monthly contact meetings with Jarawa groups but the tribes people never allowed them to enter their forests or approach them from land but in late 1998, the Jarawa suddenly began to come out of their forests into Indian settlements, without their bows and arrows. It appears that pressure from poachers along the coast drove them inland onto the main road and into settlements. This change places them in grave danger. Firstly, they have no immunity to common diseases such as measles and flu, which Can therefore be fatal. An epidemic could quite easily wipe out the whole tribe in just a couple of months.

3 4 5 6 7

Ibid Ibid Siberia to sarwak, survival international publication 2010 BASU, N.K.. FOREST AND TRIBALS, 1987 Carola Krebs, Be Friending The Jarwa

Furthermore, they face an even greater risk of losing their land. The other tribes of the Andamans lost almost all their land soon after making friendly contact with outsiders. Their land is increasingly under threat.

Papua tribe in Indonesia: Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea. The other half is the independent country of Papua New Guinea. Papua itself is home to about 2.2 million people. There are 312 tribes.8 All Papuas tribal people are Melanesians, ethnically, culturally and linguistically. Papua and its peoples are divided between the highlands and the lowlands. The central mountainous range is home to the highland tribes, also known as the kotekas. These tribes rear pigs, grow sweet potatoes, hunt, and gather some roots, berries and nuts.

Sarawak of Malaysia: On the north-west coast of Borneo is Sarawak, the largest of the Malaysian states, rich in natural resources such as gas and oil, and covered with large areas of dense rainforest. This forest is home to about 200,000 tribal people. Many more people of tribal descent live in the towns, making up almost half of Sarawaks population of 2 million.9 But more recent arrivals, ethnically Malay, dominate Sarawaks political hierarchy, while commerce and industry are mainly in the hands of people of Chinese descent. Most of Sarawaks tribal peoples live in longhouses and cultivate rice. The land and its resources are vital for the survival of Sarawaks tribal population. It provides them with their livelihood and also the focus for many of their spiritual beliefs. The longhouses of the settled tribes a common home to a whole village. Every family occupies a separate room which opens onto a shared verandah. Each longhouse community shares a large area of communal land for hunting and collecting forest produce. The land is also a reserve for future cultivation. Each family has access to enough land to feed itself, and by cultivating a plot of land acquires rights over it.

Problem with Sarawak of Malaysia: Since the 1970s, the tribal peoples land has been taken to make way for development in the form of

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' in M J G Parnwell & R J Bryant (eds), The Search For Sustainable Livelihoods In Indonesian Transmigration Settlements,NET
James Ritchie, The Life Story of Temenggong Koh (1999)

logging, mining, tourism, dams and oil palm plantations.

Thousands have been resettled or forced to move to the towns. They crowd into slum dwellings resulting into: poor nutrition, lack of employment and appalling sanitation cause dire problems and reduce the people to abject poverty.

Shifting cultivators have been forced off their lands, and the nomadic people have been told by the government that they have no rights to any land at all until they settle down.10 The tribal peoples way of life and their balanced system of rights and obligations are being destroyed by legal systems imposed from outside and state propaganda about the cultural inferiority of tribal peoples. The few rights the tribes have to their lands can be taken away from them at the wish of the government.

People who have been given inadequate compensation and poor living conditions in return for their forest homes.11

Common Problems of various Asian tribes: One thing the tribal peoples of Asia do have in common is the oppression and marginalisation they experience. Often they suffer direct violence: some of the worst atrocities against tribal peoples in recent years have taken place in Asia.

The continuing genocide against the tribal peoples of Papua where Indonesian armed forces routinely rape, kill and torture innocent tribal villagers constitutes the worst current oppression of tribal peoples anywhere in the world. In Burma, tribal people are forced into slave labour and are massacred by the army.12

10 11 12

Renang Anak Ansali, New Generation Of Iban, (2000) Ibid

Antonio Graceffo, Tales Of Asia: Operations Inside Burma ,NET

In Bangladesh, the Jumma tribal peoples have endured almost thirty years of attempted genocide, which is hopefully now drawing to a close with the recent signing of an agreement with the government. 13

Tribal peoples in Asia have also been victims of wars between others. When Japanese troops bombed and occupied the Andaman Islands from 1942 to 1945,many tribal people died.

Armed conflicts have caused huge numbers of deaths of tribal people in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Cambodia in the past, and still do in China, Burma and parts of Indonesia today.

Overview of African pygmies and their problem: The Pygmy peoples of central Africa are traditionally hunter-gatherers living in the rainforests throughout central Africa. A fundamental problem for Pygmy peoples is the lack of recognition of land rights for hunter-gatherers coupled with the denial of their indigenous status in many African states. Without nationally recognised rights to the forest lands on which they depend, outsiders or the state can take over their lands with no legal barriers and no compensation. Those communities who have lost their traditional livelihoods and lands find themselves at the bottom of mainstream society the victims of pervasive discrimination affecting every aspect of their lives.14 International legal standards for tribal:
Indigenous and tribal populations convention 1957: (c.107)It is an International Labour
Organization Convention within the United Nations that was established in 1957. Its primary focus is to recognize and protect the cultural, religious, civil and social rights of indigenous and tribal populations within an independent country, and to provide a standard framework for addressing the economic issues that many of these groups face. It has set certain legal standards regarding land acquisition, social security, health and education of tribal and indigenous groups , which are as follows:

13

Cindy I. Holder Jeff J. Corntassel(eds), Indigenous People And Multicultural Citizenship: Bridging Collective And Individual Rights Dembner, S. 1998. Forest peoples in the Central African Rainforest: focus on the Pygmies, Gland, Switzerland, World Conservation Union (IUCN).
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Regarding land acquisition: Every tribal or indigenous group within an independent country shall have right of ownership over lands that they have traditionally occupied.15

They shall not be removed from their historical territories without seeking their consent, except for national security issue, national economic development and public health reasons, if done so , then they shall be fully compensated.16

Arrangements shall be made by the state to prevent persons who are not the members of these groups from taking advantages of these customs on the part of the members of these populations to secure the ownership or use of the lands belonging to such members.17 If needed, then necessary land shall be provided by national state farm programs for their normal existence.18

Social security and health: Government social security programs shall be extended to all wage earners and other persons belonging to these populations. Governments will provide adequate health services for the populations concerned, based on studies of their social, economic and cultural conditions.19 Education: Equal educational opportunities shall be available to the populations concerned at the same levels as other national citizens. Such education programs for shall be adapted "...to the stage these populations have reached in the process of social, economic and cultural integration into the national community," and such programs shall "...be preceded by ethnological surveys.20

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Art.11 Art.12 17 Art 13(2) 18 Art. 14 19 Art.19, Art.20 20 Art.21, Art.22

Children shall be taught to read and right in their mother tongue, in order to promote their mother tongue.21

Nation state shall educate the children of these populations to become an integral part of the national community.22

It shall be the duty of the state to aware and educate them about their rights and duties, specially with regard to labour and social welfare.23

Indigenous and tribal peoples convention 1989: (no. 169) It was adopted on 27thjune 1989 by general conference of the international labour organisation, and enforced on 5thsept 1991. Its important sources were- The international standards contained in the Indigenous and tribal populations convention 1957, the terms of Universal Declaration On Human Rights and International convention on economic social and cultural rights. Purpose: The main purpose of this enactment was to enable indigenous and tribal groups of various member states to exercise control over their own institutions, to enhance their way of living by standardising their human rights. Regarding human rights::( put foot notes from copy notes articles )
The state shall provide them with equal rights and opportunities to them through the national laws.24

The state shall respect their social and cultural identity , their customs and traditions and their institutions.25

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Art.23 Art.24 23 Art.26 24 Art.1(a) 25 Art.2(1)

8 The state shall formulate policies in order to eliminate socio- economic gaps between tribal groups and other sections of the national community.26

Tribal groups shall enjoy full measures of human rights and fundamental freedoms without hindrances or discrimination.27

The state shall take measures to safeguard their persons , property, labours , institutions, culture and environment.28

During the application of this convention , their social, cultural, religious and spiritual values and practices of them shall be recognised and protected.29

Judicial Pronouncement: Mabo v. Queensland30 Mabo v. queensland (1992) was a land mark judgement given by high court of Australia regarding the possessory rights of the Merian tribe of Australia. The action which brought about the decision had been led by Eddie Mabo, David Passi and James Rice, all from the Meriam people (from the Murray islands in the Torres Srait). They commenced proceedings in the High Court in 1982, in response to the Queensland Amendment Act 1982 establishing a system of making land grants on trust for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, which the Murray Islanders refused to accept. The Plaintiffs were represented by Ron Castan, Bryan Keon-Cohen and Greg McIntyre. The action was brought as a test case to determine the legal rights of the Meriam people to land on the islands of Mer (Murry Island), Dauar and Waier in the Torres Strait which were annexed to the state of Queensland in 1879. Prior to British contact the Meriam people had lived on the islands in a subsistence economy, based on cultivation and fishing. Land on the

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Art.2(c) Art.3(1) 28 Art.4(1) 29 Art.5(a) 30 Mabo v. queensland (no.2) 1992 manson CJ

islands was not subject of public or general community ownership, but was regarded as belonging to individuals or groups. In 1985 the Queensland Government attempted to terminate the proceedings by enacting the Queensland Coast Island Declaratory Act 1985 which declared that on annexation of the islands in 1879, title to the islands was vested in the state of Queensland "freed from all other rights, interests and claims whatsoever". In Mabo v. queensland(1988) the High Court held that this legislation was contrary to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The plaintiffs sought declaration that the Meriam people were entitled to the Murray Islands "as owners; as possessors; as occupiers; or as persons entitled to use and enjoy the said islands".

Recommendations and Conclusion: The laws made in order to preserve the rights of different tribal groups, residing in different parts of the world, are common. Though the problems of these tribal groups varies from each other ,i.e.; in some tribal groups health and sanitation problems are more prevalent, while some are lacking behind in education, likewise Asian and Australian tribes are facing problems related to their land possessory rights , while African and American tribes severely subjected by biopiracy, but the international standards set by various International organisations (as already discussed before) are common for every tribe . Specific laws shall be made, by these international organisations , for different tribal groups , after making a separate study upon the socio-economical, political, cultural, health and educational conditions of each tribal group. It will not only help to focus upon the core problems of different tribes but also fulfil the objectives of these international organisations more accurately.

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