Source: Jakarta Post
Indigenous women around the world suffer disproportionately from gender-related violence, but they say a lack of hard numbers has allowed governments to ignore the problem.

Members of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues asked the United Nations on Thursday for better data to pinpoint the problem and help develop solutions.

"In the majority of our countries there's no disaggregated data, so although we know there's a bigger amount of violence against indigenous women we cannot prove that," said Myrna Cunningham Kain, an indigenous woman from Nicaragua and a member of the permanent forum.

Kain said that in Canada, one of the few countries that maintain separate statistics, indigenous women are 3 times more likely to be sexually assaulted and seven times more likely to be killed than non-indigenous women.

Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, president of The Native Women's Association Of Canada, says about one in five indigenous women in her country have suffered gender-related violence.

In Kenya, seven out of 10 indigenous women have been victims of gender-related violence said Agens Leina, executive directors of Il'laramak Community Concerns — an indigenous rights group.

Kain said violence against indigenous women is a complicated problem because its roots lie both within and outside the community.

For example, some communities may maintain harmful cultural practices, like genital mutilation in Africa, which still "have to be harmonized with international human rights."

In other cases, marginalized indigenous communities are often not respected by governments and are disproportionately affected by armed conflicts.