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The Society for the Promotion of Himalayan Indigenous Activities (SOPHIA) is a non-profit organisation based in the state of Uttarakhand in India. SOPHIA's office is located in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, while its operational coverage extends through the states of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Uttarakhand (UK), and Himachal Pradesh (HP). The organisation works for indigenous communities to improve their living conditions and to facilitate the process of claiming forests rights through the 2006 Forest Rights Act. SOPHIA's director is Praveen Kaushal. Since its founding, SOPHIA has particularly worked with the Muslim nomadic Van Gujjar community who dwell in the forest of the Western Himalayas and practice buffalo pastoralism. The Van Gujjars have since the early 1990s been subject to politics of forest conservation where the construction of Protected Areas, nobably Rajaji National Park and Govind Wildlife Sanctuary, has led to governmental actions for their forced displacement.〔 SOPHIA has worked to advocate the claims of Van Gujjars and to help the Gujjar community access information through the Right to Information Act in this process.〔 ==History== SOPHIA was registered as a Society in Uttarakhand in August 1996. The organisation was an offshoot of RLEK (Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra), an NGO that initially worked for the Van Gujjar community but increasingly had turned to other issues. Consequently, SOPHIA was founded by staff from RLEK's former Van Gujjar Programme. Since 1996 SOPHIA has run a milk marketing programme together with the Van Gujjar community while simultaneously advocating Van Gujjar issues in media and legal institutions. Between 2001-2004 SOPHIA ran a health programme in the Van Gujjar community. Addressing health and family planning issues served as a means for women's empowerment through the formation of women's groups. In these groups Gujjar women could also raise non-health related issues and set aside money for women-only loans. After 2004 SOPHIA's focus has shifted to a rights-based approach focusing on domicile rights (including claiming the rights of Van Gujjars to vote in state and national elections), anti-corruption, and forest rights. SOPHIA's work is based on a Van Gujjar community "self-diagnosis process" in which the Gujjars formulate the priorities to be kept by SOPHIA.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Society for the Promotion of Himalayan Indigenous Activities (SOPHIA)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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