and religious minorities, indigenous peoples often are among the poorest in society and face institutionalized discrimination at different levels of power, forcing them into economic marginalization and financial insecurity. For this reason, the study also covers indigenous populations and includes a question on the laws regulating communal land rights.<sup>6</sup> _Sexual minorities_ refers to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex. Lesbian women are women who are attracted to women, and gay men are men who are attracted to other men. Bisexuals are attracted to both men and women. As for _transgender_ , the United Nations defines the term as follows:

[A]n umbrella term used to describe a wide range of identities—including transsexual people, crossdressers (sometimes referred to as “transvestites”), people who identify as third gender, and others whose appearance and characteristics are perceived as gender atypical. Transwomen identify as women but were classified as males when they were born. Transmen identify as men but were classified female when they were born. (Free and Equal Initiative n.d.) Further, an _intersex person_ is someone born with sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, and/or chromosome patterns that do not fit the typical definition of male or female. This may be apparent at birth or become so later in life. An intersex person may be identified as male or female or as neither. Intersex status is not about sexual orientation or gender identity: intersex people experience the same range of sexual orientations and gender identities as non-intersex people. (Free and Equal Initiative, n.d.) International law in the field of LGBTI rights is still in its infancy, and the World Bank Group has only recently acknowledged the economic fragility of those populations (SOGI Task Force 2015) and the effect that exclusion of sexual minorities can have on the economic growth of a country (Kim 2014). As highlighted in a World Bank report on LGBTI communities around the world, data on LGBTI people are scarce, even in developed countries (Koehler and Menzies, forthcoming).

Two terms often used in the LGBTI literature are _sexual orientation_ and _gender identity_ . The closest to generally accepted definitions of those terms are those provided by the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Sexual orientation is understood to refer to each person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectional and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with, individuals of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender.

Gender identity is understood to refer to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms. (ICJ 2007) Finally, adopting the more developed language used in the gender equality and women’s rights literature—which often talks about _gender gap_ to refer to the gender-based disparities in the economic, political, education, and health spheres<sup>7</sup> — the study refers to disparities in the same fields between ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and the respective majorities as _the minority gap_ . The term is clearly a gross generalization of the myriad differences among the three groups and within each group; however, it is useful in highlighting the existence of the phenomenon and is used in this paper.

> their usufructuary traditions. Unfortunately, in many countries, indigenous peoples have seen their traditional lands eroded through mass deforestation. Mining and oil and mineral exploitation are notable problems in large swaths of Africa and Latin America.

> 6 Because many of the issues concerning ethnic minorities also affect indigenous peoples, issues related to indigenous peoples are included in the ethnic minorities survey.

> 7 The Global Gender Gap Index, World Economic Forum, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/the-globalgender-gap-index-2015/.

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