This year, the theme of the Day is 'Honouring Indigenous Youth, Languages and Sacred Sites'.

Different organisations have chalked out elaborate programmes to observe the Day with a pledge to ensure human rights of the country's 41 indigenous communities.

Bangladesh Indigenous People's Forum has taken a daylong programme to mark the occasion. The programme includes a rally from Ramna at 10:00am, and a discussion, exhibition and cultural show in the evening. Eminent economist Prof Rehman Sobhan will inaugurate the programme at 10:00am.

Bangladesh Development Partnership Centre (BDPC) will hold a discussion at its central office in the city at 4:00pm to mark of the Day.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a message said that today is a time to remember those indigenous peoples who continue to suffer discrimination, marginalisation, extreme poverty and conflict.

They also face dispossession of their traditional lands and livelihoods, displacement, destruction of their belief systems, culture, language and way of life--- and even the threat of extinction, he added.

Meanwhile, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner yesterday wished to pay tribute to the enormous diversity and cultural wealth of indigenous peoples in all parts of the world.

In her message, Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner reaffirms the European Commission's unwavering commitment to support indigenous people all over the world.

She also said that European Commission co-funds two smaller projects of Caritas Bangladesh aimed at supporting integration and skill development of indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and along the coastal belt.

Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) President Hasanul Haq Inu and General Secretary Syed Jafar Sazzad yesterday demanded constitutional recognition of the indigenous people, which has not been implemented although it has been 36 years since our independence.