Indigenous Navigator: a New Era for Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh

Indigenous Navigator: a New Era for Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh

Written on 23 December 2025. Posted in News

BY TRIJINAD CHAKMA FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

The Santal community worked together with the Indigenous Navigator initiative and Kapaeeng Foundation to collect community data on the main problems affecting them. After conducting surveys and focus groups, land defence emerged as the most urgent challenge. A project was therefore developed to raise the visibility of their demands and to unify efforts to defend their rights. The data collection has served to raise awareness of the historical gap in documentation and has had an impact on the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the country's census.

The Indigenous Santal community, settled mainly in northern Bangladesh in the sub-districts of Parbatipur and Gobindaganj, continues to face multiple challenges despite occasional recognition of their rights and culture. One of the key problems is land dispossession: many families have lost their ancestral lands to State development projects or land grabbing. The situation reflects a clear marginalization: legal protection remains weak, social inclusion limited and economic conditions fragile, which hinders both the preservation of their cultural identity and the possibility of socioeconomic mobility.

In turn, access to education is extremely limited: while many children attend primary school, few manage to continue on to secondary or to access higher education due to poverty, language barriers, lack of institutional support and sociocultural pressures. For their part, Santal women bear the burden of agricultural work, face gender inequality and lack support to improve their livelihoods. Another serious problem is discrimination and social isolation: they are excluded from public spaces, suffer cultural marginalization and often do not receive justice when they are the victims of violence.

The survey, conducted in Dalu, Hodi, Khasi, Kondo, Lushai and Santal communities. collected data on the implementation (or not) of a wide range of Indigenous Peoples' rights: self-determination, cross-border connections, cultural integrity, employment, freedom of expression and media, fundamental freedoms, socioeconomic development, health, land and resources, legal protection, access to justice and participation in public life. The data generated by the community itself laid the groundwork for initiatives aimed at strengthening Indigenous territorial rights.

Documenting Rights and Realities with the Santal Community

The human rights organization Kapaeeng Foundation is the implementing partner for the Indigenous Navigator, which has had a presence in Bangladesh since 2017. In this role, it supports Indigenous communities to collect data through community surveys and focus group discussions. The current research on the implementation of Indigenous rights was initiated in October 2022, through surveys in 40 communities across the country. This information, which is already available on the portal, is being used by communities to guide and implement self-determined development projects.

Kapaeeng Foundation has an extensive network of contacts throughout the country. Given the severity of land conflicts affecting the Santal community in Parbatipur and Gobindaganj, the Foundation felt it was crucial to include them in the community surveys and used its network to make this possible. For the community, the Indigenous Navigator thus became a key tool with which to highlight the discrepancies between official government data and the reality experienced by the communities. This gap particularly came to light during the analysis of the community surveys.

The surveys were conducted through focus groups with a wide range of participants: men, women, youth, people with disabilities and the elderly. For the Santal (as for other Indigenous Peoples), the Indigenous Navigator introduced a framework and a set of tools that enabled them to generate valuable data and monitor and document their overall human rights situation. Up to that point, there had been no formal documentation of the community. Participants found the questionnaire empowering and transformative and were surprised to discover that this framework was designed by and for Indigenous Peoples.

Young community leader Manik Soren highlighted the relevance of the initiative: "The Indigenous Navigator has highlighted the information gaps regarding the land, education, health, culture and human rights of Indigenous Peoples to the Bangladeshi government. I believe it will be a key tool with which to document these shortcomings and improve our human rights situation. As a global framework, I hope that the government will use this information and take the necessary measures to promote and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the country."

Defending the Land: the most Urgent Challenge

Before uploading the information to the Indigenous Navigator portal, the data was analysed and reviewed by Kapaeeng Foundation's team, external experts and the community itself. The results were shared with the participants through a workshop. There it was confirmed that the Santal people are facing serious social, cultural, economic and political challenges. Alongside this, a lack of political representation in local government is further limiting their advocacy capacity.

The lack of affirmative action on the part of the State has led to the loss of ancestral lands. The most emblematic case is Bagda Farm, from where more than 2,500 Santal and Bengali families were violently evicted by the police in 2016: three Santal men were killed and hundreds of houses destroyed. Although 1,500 families still live there, they face a renewed threat of eviction due to government plans to install an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) in the territory that the Santal assert is their own.

The community consultations also pointed out that their land rights remain unrecognized and they are forced to make enormous sacrifices to defend them. Their cultural heritage and traditional social structures are at risk of disappearing. In addition, the Santal suffer racial discrimination from the Bengali majority, and women and girls are exposed to sexual and physical violence (including rape, kidnapping and fabricated court cases), used as a mechanism to generate fear, insecurity and forced displacement.

Small Projects, Big Impacts

Of all the problems analysed, the community identified land defence as their greatest challenge. For such cases, the Indigenous Navigator has a small grants mechanism so that participating communities can develop and implement their own projects. Once they have analysed their surveys, communities are therefore able to collectively prioritize their most urgent problems and develop tailor-made solutions, with the initiative's support. In November 2024, through this mechanism, Kapaeeng Foundation and the Indigenous communities launched two projects.

One of the projects targeted the Santal community and identified land rights as the most critical issue. In the face of evictions and encroachment by Bengali groups, State agencies and the security forces, the Santal community developed a project to promote and protect their land rights in Parbatipur and Gobindaganj sub-districts of northern Bangladesh. Framed as a collective movement, the proposal was supported by Kapaeeng Foundation and designed jointly by two organizations: Jatiya Adivasi Parishad and the Bagda Farm Struggle for Recovery Committee (SBUSC).

The project's activities seek to raise community awareness of their rights and provide them with the tools to strengthen their advocacy capacity. One key component involves supporting advocacy efforts with the local authorities to resolve territorial disputes. To this end, Kapaeeng Foundation developed advocacy materials in Bangla and English aimed at amplifying the community's voice. The project also seeks to strengthen the links between the Santal, the Indigenous organizations and national networks, with the aim of unifying and amplifying their struggle for territorial rights.

Following approval of the project, the Santal community has shown confidence and determination to push forward towards the agreed objectives, convinced that this initiative will unite them, strengthen their relationship with local, national and international actors, and consolidate their struggle for rights and dignity.

Advancing Indigenous Rights from the Grassroots up

In Bangladesh, Indigenous Peoples - both in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and on the plains - continue to face a lack of recognition and systematic violations of their rights. Among the most serious problems identified was that of territorial dispossession, which continues to displace families and threaten their cultural survival. This general context highlights the importance of the Indigenous Navigator, whose tools empower Indigenous communities to define their priorities and design projects based around their own solutions.

Beyond the Santal experience, the Indigenous Navigator has brought pride and recognition to marginalized groups across Bangladesh, including the Lushai, Pangko, Hodi, Bagdi and Gorait. Community data available on a global platform has become an invaluable resource for advocacy and research. In fact, Kapaeeng Foundation's efforts have influenced the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics to include Indigenous Peoples in the national census, thus addressing longstanding data gaps.

After a long period of data collection, the Santal community designed a project that focuses on raising awareness of Indigenous rights, strengthening community advocacy, and building capacity for effective dialogue with the authorities. It also strengthens ties between the Santal and other Indigenous organizations, consolidating a united front in the struggle for justice and recognition. This progress demonstrates the transformative potential of accurate data and grassroots empowerment. Ultimately, the Indigenous Navigator has had a positive impact both on the Indigenous communities and on the different actors involved in defending their rights.

Trijinad Chakma is a human rights activist in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of south-eastern Bangladesh. He is the project coordinator of Kapaeeng Foundation and has been involved in the activities of the Indigenous Navigator project in Bangladesh since 2019.

Cover photo: Shiblal Tudu

Tags: Indigenous Debates