The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an international program hosted by UN, has released two reports, Making the Law Work for Everyone Volume I and Making the Law Work for Everyone Volume II that call on governments to make legal empowerment a key pillar of the anti-poverty agenda. The reports found that the majority of the world's people are excluded from the rule of law because the majority of poor people live and work in the "informal sector" and are therefore locked out of recognized legal protections and economic benefits of the formal sector.

The Canadian Parliament has endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by a majority vote after Canada, along with the U.S., Australia and New Zealand voted against it in the U.N. in September 2007. The Declaration affirms the human rights of indigenous people based on indigenous origin or identity and affirms indigenous people's right to self-determination. The Conservative party has been opposed to the Declaration and voted against the endorsement. Read more on the Amnesty International Canada site and in an article on the site, Indian Country, "Endorsing their rights".

New research by Jack Hicks, a social research consultant living in Iqaluit, Nunavut, tracks how suicide trends in the Arctic correlate with increased colonialism and modernization in the Arctic. Historically, suicide in the Arctic was uncommon, but the suicide rate dramatically increased when national governments forced Inuit people in Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland off the land and into larger communities. Read more in a CBC article, "Research tracks Inuit modernization with suicide, offers hope for improvement" or you can listen to a interview with Jack Hicks on the CBC show, As it Happens. You can also download a copy of the journal, Indigenous Affairs (in PDF) with Jack Hicks' paper, "The Social Determinants of Elevated Rates of Suicide Among Inuit Youth," or you can download a copy of his slide presentation (in PDF).