Survival International is a human rights organisation formed in 1969 that describes itself as a global movement for the collective rights of Indigenous, tribal and uncontacted peoples. Survival works in partnership with Indigenous and tribal peoples, and offers a platform that helps ensure that the world can hear their voices.
The organisation's campaigns generally focus on tribal peoples' desires to keep their ancestral lands, which they rely on for food, housing, medicines, clothing and a sense of identity and belonging. Survival International calls these peoples "extraordinarily resilient". The organisation aims to eradicate what it calls 'colonial land grabs' used to justify violations of human rights. It also aims to publicise harm caused to tribes by corporations and governments. Survival International states that it aims to help foster tribal people's self-determination.
Survival International is in association with the United Nations Department of Global Communications and in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. To ensure freedom of action, Survival accepts no corporate or government funding. It is a founding member and a signatory organisation of the Accountability Charter (INGO Accountability Charter). Survival's international headquarters are in London and it has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Paris, and San Francisco.
History
Survival International was founded in 1969 (as the "Primitive Peoples Fund") after an article by Norman Lewis in The Sunday Times Magazine highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia. In 1971, the fledgling organisation visited Brazil to observe the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) government agency responsible for tribal peoples there. After a name change, Survival International incorporated as an English company in 1972 and registered as a charity in 1974. According to the autobiography of its first chairman, the explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison, while travelling with the ethnobotanist Conrad Gorinsky in the Amazon in 1968,