M1-WS 3: Refworld

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain

The extended title of this web site is “Refworld: The leader in Refugee Decision Support”.  Its primary focus is on refugee rights and consequently overlaps with indigenous issues.  The site is backed by the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

This site is a gold mine of information about anything you could imagine dealing with refugee/indigenous issues.  You can search by country, region, ethnic group, topic, publisher, document type, etc. and also has an advanced search option as well as search tips.  When I searched for Nepal, I found a short article titled, “State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 – Nepal”.  It was very concise yet informative.  As if this isn’t enough information to last a year or two, the site also boasts an extensive collection of external links (2323 to be exact).  It’s possible to browse the links by type, topic, region and country.  If there are still too many results, it’s possible to search for a key word in the findings.

With so much information offered here, it does take time to sort out what is relevant to your research area; however, there are tools available to help in your search including a personalization feature that requires you to subscribe to the site.