A victory for Indian candidate Evo Morales in Bolivia's presidential election would help promote the indigenous movement in the South American country, a U.N. agency said Monday.

Indigenous people in Bolivia are succeeding in getting the government to pay attention to their issues and pushing to get their rights exercised, said the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in a report.

As a result of the indigenous movement, Bolivians are discussing the nature of their society, the country's democracy and the state itself, ECLAC said.

Morales, leader of the Movement Toward Socialism, garnered 51 percent of the vote late Sunday, according to exit polls. If confirmed by the electoral authorities, he will become the first president in Bolivian history from the country's Indian ethnic majority, who make up a majority of the population.

But ECLAC also noted that government planning and programs failed to reflect the political and legal visibility of Bolivia's indigenous population, and statistics about them were grossly lacking.

Bolivia's indigenous population is made up of 37 ethnic groups, including the Aymara, Quechua and Guarani, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the exclusion and inequality that affects them in a wide range of issues such as land, education, health and employment opportunities.

ECLAC offered to put together proper methods of identifying the ethnic groups in Bolivia, using the data provided by the country's 2001 census and adding criteria like self-identification, the language spoken by them and mother tongue.

The report said indigenous children still fall behind and drop out of school far more than the general population despite provision of bilingual education.

Only 37 percent of the indigenous population have graduated from high school, compared with 54 percent for the non-indigenous people.

Infant mortality stands at 7.6 percent in the indigenous population compared with 5.2 percent in non-indigenous Bolivians.

Some 62 percent of Bolivia's population are indigenous and in rural areas 72 percent of the population speak indigenous languages. That falls to 36 percent in the cities.

Source: Xinhua