UNESCO and UNICEF should continue to promote bilingual and cross-cultural education programs for indigenous peoples and schools for girls and women's literacy progrmas in Latin America, and should encourage and expand these experiences in other regions.
The Permanent Forum urges indigenous academics, scientists and traditional knowledge holders to organize their own processes to consolidate their knowledge and experiences in climate change science into a report that can feed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Permanent Forum.
The Permanent Forum is concerned that, in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Member States are not complying with the Declaration. In one case, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination requested that Norway temporarily suspend the ongoing construction of the Fosen Vind onshore wind power project, which negatively affects the reindeer herding of the South Sami people. The Government of Norway, having concluded that its administrative and legal processes were sufficient, did not implement the interim measures. The Forum urges Member States to respect and comply with decisions made by the United Nations treaty bodies.
The Permanent Forum encourages States to continue cooperating with indigenous peoples to develop fair, transparent and effective mechanisms for the repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains, at the national and international levels.
Given increased violence against indigenous peoples in the Amazon region, the Permanent Forum urges the Member States of the region to take urgent, extraordinary and coordinated measures to protect the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, with the aim of maintaining their ownership and use of their territories. The Forum also calls upon the United Nations system and specialized agencies, including OHCHR, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and ILO, to support Member States in the protection of indigenous peoples’ habitats and cultures in the Amazon region in cooperation with indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum requests that WIPO commission a technical review, to be conducted by an indigenous expert, focusing on the draft texts concerning traditional knowledge, genetic resources and traditional cultural expressions, and to provide comments thereon to the Intergovernmental Committee through the Forum. The review should be undertaken within the framework of indigenous human rights.
The Forum recommends that Member States ratify the Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage and ensure that it is fully implemented.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States support the creation of indigenous language and cultural studies centres in universities and encourage universities to provide permanent teaching positions for indigenous peoples in those study centres; urges States to adopt a policy of free university tuition for all indigenous peoples; encourages those universities that have not already done so to establish designated places and scholarships for indigenous students; and encourages UNESCO to support those initiatives where applicable.
The Permanent Forum encourages Member States, in cooperation with United Nations agencies, to develop social policies that will enhance the production of indigenous peoples’ traditional foods and promote the restoration or recovery of lost drought-resistant indigenous food varieties to ensure food security. In this context, the Forum recommends that Burkina Faso, Mali and the Niger, as well as United Nations agencies such as FAO, IFAD and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, establish a committee, in full consultation with and with the participation of indigenous peoples, aimed at preventing food crises in the sub Saharan region where indigenous peoples reside. The committee’s objective should be to prevent humanitarian disasters and, in particular, to prevent starvation at the same level as the disaster that struck the region in 1973.
The Forum recommends that the Inter-Agency Support Group convene a technical workshop on indigenous traditional knowledge, in collaboration with United Nations agencies dealing with this issue, with the participation of indigenous experts, with a view to promoting a collaborative, complementary and holistic approach to traditional knowledge in order to enhance better understanding of indigenous concerns and their possible solution and requests the workshop to submit its report to the Forum at its fifth session
The Permanent Forum recommends that the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, and the advisory bodies IUCN, ICOMOS and ICCROM, scrutinize current World Heritage nominations to ensure they comply with international norms and standards of free, prior and informed consent.
The Forum recommends that the United Nations and Member States recognize the cultural rights of indigenous peoples which include the rights to organize oneself freely and to administer one’s own cultural, sports, social and religious institutions. For this purpose, the Forum encourages the United Nations and the relevant specialized agencies to consider establishing an international centre for multicultural and multiracial studies.