The Forum recommends that States and United Nations organizations involve indigenous peoples' representatives in designing, implementing and monitoring data collection and disaggregation by ensuring their membership in the mechanism of national commissions on population censuses and related institutional arrangements.
The Forum expresses its appreciation to the Inter-Agency Support Group for its contribution to its work during its third session and in-between sessions, as well as for the documents provided to the Forum. The Forum also expresses its appreciation for the attendance of the session by representatives of the United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, renews its invitation to the United Nations system to continue to attend its sessions, and expresses the hope that this constructive engagement will continue.
The Permanent Forum calls upon all member States and United Nations agencies to respond to the annual questionnaire from the secretariat of the Permanent Forum in order to provide information on reliable practices that lead to the full and effective implementation of the Declaration. Further, the Forum recommends that the secretariat of the Permanent Forum include questions that particularly focus on indigenous children and youth.
With a view to assessing the effectiveness of the implementation of policies on indigenous peoples, the Permanent Forum recommends to the United Nations entities that carry out free, prior and informed consent processes to develop a system for comprehensively documenting these processes.
Good practices in terms of the implementation of recommendations should be disseminated more widely so that they can provide examples for indigenous peoples, the United Nations system, Governments and others.
The Permanent Forum continues to be concerned by the lack of participation of African indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum recommends that the General Assembly encourage relevant United Nations entities to make the necessary financial and administrative arrangements that allow for the participation of indigenous peoples at relevant United Nations meetings, including online.
The Forum expresses its satisfaction that the Inter-Agency Support Group has met since the first session of the Forum to organize its input to the second session, and expresses appreciation to the ILO and the World Bank for having convened the Group. The Forum requests the Group to extend its membership to other United Nations system entities so as to promote the largest possible participation of the system in the work programme of the Forum, and requests the secretariat of the Forum to provide substantive support to the rotating Chair of the Group. The Forum also expresses appreciation for the active participation of agency focal points in a constructive dialogue during its second session, and expresses the hope that focal points will continue to participate at its third session.
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 is concerned by the high number of indigenous children being removed from their families and placed into public social care, in particular in developed countries. In this regard, the Forum noted with satisfaction the Expert Mechanism’s engagement on the rights of the indigenous children. The report of the Expert Mechanism on the indigenous child will be discussed at its forthcoming session, in July 2021.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the endorsement by the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination in November 2020 of a call to action to revitalize the system-wide action plan on the rights of indigenous peoples, as set out in the report entitled “Building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future with indigenous peoples: a call to action”. In the report, the Chief Executives Board called for ensuring the more systematic participation of indigenous peoples in United Nations country processes, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks, and in the implementation of socioeconomic response and recovery plans and the Goals.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators provide support for the inclusion and methodological development of core indicators for indigenous peoples in the global indicator framework, in particular the inclusion of the indicator on the legal recognition of the land rights of indigenous peoples for the targets under Goals 1 and 2.
The Forum decides to hold a meeting of four of its members with the Inter-Agency Support Group (IASG) at its annual session of IASG, in 2004.