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 MagazineLewis, Norman (23 February 1969), "Genocide", Sunday Times Magazine, pp. 34–59. 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,Hanbury-Tenison, 1991, pp 125–126.
It was the first in this field to use mass letter-writing, having orchestrated several campaigns in many different places throughout the world, such as Siberia, Canada, and Kenya. Several campaigns were able to bring change to government policies regarding the rights of local Indigenous people. In 2000, this form of struggle was successful in driving the Indian government to abandon their plan to relocate the isolated Jarawa tribe, after receiving 150-200 letters a day from Survival supporters around the world. Shortly before that, the governor of western Siberia imposed a five-year ban on all oil licences in the territory of the Yugan Khanty within weeks of Survival issuing a bulletin. Survival was also the first organisation to draw attention to the destructive effects of World Bank projects – now recognised as a major cause of suffering in many poor countries.
Survival is the only international pro-tribal peoples organisation to have received the Right Livelihood Award, as well as the Spanish "Premio Léon Felipe" and the Italian "".
Structure and aims Survival International works for Indigenous peoples' rights on three complementary levels: education, advocacy and campaigns. It also offers tribal people a platform to address the world, while connecting with local Indigenous organisations, with a focus on tribal peoples under more urgent threat from contact with the outside world. The educational programs are aimed at people in the Western world, aiming at "demolishing the myth that tribal people are relics, destined to perish through 'progress'". Survival seeks to promote respect for their cultures and explain their relevance today in preserving their way of life.
Survival has supporters in 100 countries. Its materials are published in many languages throughout the world. It is a registered charity in the United Kingdom and the equivalent in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, and can receive tax-free donations in the Netherlands.
Survival refuses government funding, depending exclusively on public support, in order to ensure freedom of action. All the people sent into the field belong to Survival International staff, none are sponsored volunteers or visitors of any kind. Overseas projects are carried and managed by tribes themselves.
Tribes There are more than 476 million tribal people worldwide, living in more than 90 countries around the world. These include at least 196 uncontacted peoples in 10 countries. Survival International supports these endangered tribes on a global level, with campaigns established in the Americas, Africa, the Pacific and Asia. Most of them have been persecuted and face genocide by diseases, relocation from their homes by logging and mining, and eviction by settlers.
Survival believes that Indigenous rights to land ownership, although recognised by international law, are not effectively respected, with tribes being invaded by activities such as oil and mineral mining, logging, cattle ranching, private or government "development" schemes such as building of roads and dams, or for nature reserves and game parks. Beyond these economic causes for exploitive invasions, Survival highlights ignorance and racism that sees tribal peoples as backward and primitive. Survival believes that in the long-term, public opinion is the most effective force for change.
The impact of the outside world on the existence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures is described as being very dramatic. In Siberia, only 10% of the tribal peoples live a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, compared to 70% 30 years ago. In 2025, Survival published the first comprehensive report on uncontacted peoples worldwide. It found that almost half of the world's uncontacted peoples could be wiped out within ten years if governments and companies did not take action.
In Brazil – where Survival has found evidence of 124 uncontacted peoples – there are about 400 speakers for 110 languages. For authors such as Daniel Everett, this phenomenon represents a fundamental assault on the existence of peoples, as language expresses the way a group of people experience reality in a unique way, and it is a part of our common heritage. Ranka Bjeljac-Babic, lecturer and specialist in the psychology of language, describes an intrinsic and causal link between the threat of biological diversity and cultural diversity. The assault on Indigenous customs and traditions is described as part of a larger assault on life, with its historical roots in colonization. Survival's report Progress can Kill highlights that the invasion of the Americas and Australia by Europeans eliminated 90% of the Indigenous population on these continents. The threat of genocide continues.
Most fundamentally, Survival believes that it is the respect for the right to keep their land that may allow them to survive. The issues of human rights and freedom depend on the land on which they can subsist and develop according to their own culture. Interference with this basic need endangers their capacity to live sustainably.
In January 2019, the newly elected president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro stripped the Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI of the responsibility to identify and demarcate Indigenous lands. He argued that those territories have very tiny isolated populations and proposed to integrate them into the larger Brazilian society. According to the Survival International, "Taking responsibility for Indigenous land demarcation away from FUNAI, the Indian affairs department, and giving it to the Agriculture Ministry is virtually a declaration of open warfare against Brazil's tribal peoples."
Campaigns Survival International campaigns alongside Indigenous people around the world. Its current campaigns are in the Americas, Africa and Asia and the Pacific. They select their cases based on a criterion the organisation has established, which depends on a wide range of factors, such as the reliability and continuity of the information, the gravity of the situation the tribe in question is facing, the degree to which they believe their work can make a real difference, the degree to which improvements in this area would have a knock on effect for others, whether any other organisation is already working on the case, and whether they are sure of what the people themselves want.
A common threat to the tribes for which Survival campaigns is the invasion of their lands for exploration of resources. This invariably leads to forced relocation, loss of sustainability and forced changes in their way of living. Usually, this is accompanied by diseases from the contact with the outsiders for which they have an unprepared immune system – this threat alone can wipe out entire tribes. Logging and/or cattle ranchers have affected most of these tribes, from South America, Africa, to Australasia. The Arhuaco, in Colombia, have drug plantations, associated with crossfire from guerilla wars between cartel and government interests. The Ogiek, in Kenya, have tea plantations, and the Amungme in Indonesia, the San in Botswana, the Dongria Kondh in India, and the Palawan in the Philippines have mining fields.
The Arhuaco, Ayoreo, Aborigines, the Innu, and several tribes in West Papua have all suffered direct attacks on their culture from what, in the perspective of Survival, may constitute good intention, but nevertheless is destructive to their lives.
Besides suffering the genocide brought about through disease and hunger (which is the result of losing their natural environment and having fertile soil stolen from them), Survival says some tribes have suffered campaigns of direct assassination. Most tribes in South America, such as the Awá, Akuntsu, Guaraní, and the Yanomami, have been murdered on sight by multinational workers, ranchers and gunmen for hire, while tribes in Africa and Asia have suffered waves of murder at the hands of the government. Survival International has pointed to the tribe Akuntsu, of which only five members still remain, as an example of what this threat represents: the eventual genocide of a whole people.
Survival International has called attention to the rise in suicide in tribal peoples such as the Innu, Australian Aborigines, and the Guarani, as a consequence of outside interference with the tribes' cultures and direct persecution. Suffering from the trauma of forced relocation, many tribal people find themselves in despair living in an environment they are not used to, where there is nothing useful to do, and where they are treated with racist disdain by their new neighbours. Other social consequences from this displacement have been pointed out to alcoholism and violence, with campaigns reporting the cases of the Innu, Mursi, Bodi, Konso, and Wanniyala-Aetto. Tribal peoples are also more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Among the tribes with whom Survival International has campaigned, there has been reported rapes of girls and women by workers of invading companies in the Indigenous tribes of Penan, West Papuan tribes, Jummas, and Jarawa.
The government role in these territories varies. Most Brazilian tribes are protected under law, while in reality there has been resistance in policies and strong support for enterprises that carry out these threats on their existence. In Africa, the San tribes and other tribes have been persecuted with beating and torture to force relocation, as well as murder in the Nuba, and in the Bangladesh, Asia, with the Jummas. Sometimes governments offer compensations that are believed by Survival to be unwanted alternatives for the tribes, portrayed as "development".