Recognizing the progress made, and building on the recommendations made in
its report on its first session, the Forum provides the following advice and recommendations:
(a) Encourages United Nations bodies whose activities have an impact on indigenous children and youth, including, but not limited to, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and the Department of Public Information of the United Nations Secretariat, to report regularly to the Forum. The reports should contain detailed information on and assess the progress made within programmes directed at, affecting and relating to indigenous adolescents.
(b) Reiterates its recommendation that the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), as the United Nations nodal agency on children:
Present a comprehensive report to the Forum on an annual basis, including budgetary allocations and an assessment of their impact, including details of all its initiatives undertaken in collaboration with other specialized bodies of the United Nations system relating to indigenous children and those undertaken at the international or regional levels, as well as country initiatives, where applicable; Provide information from the multi-indicator cluster survey being globally undertaken by UNICEF, disaggregating data on the antenatal health, birth, registration, immunization and early childhood development of indigenous children.
Special emphasis should be placed by States on the involvement of city and local government authorities in engaging and supporting young indigenous people to achieve the Millennium Development Goals at the local level. Priorities for local authorities should include the creation of local youth councils with the participation of indigenous youth in decision-making, the provision of meeting spaces for young people to gather and coordinate projects, develop youth leadership, support for youth artistic and cultural expression, promotion of sport for development and peace and access to information and communication technologies
The Permanent Forum calls upon UNESCO, in its coordination of the International Decade, to give attention to the role of indigenous languages in the preservation of traditional food and knowledge systems that are important to climate change adaptation strategies.
Assure and support the full participation of indigenous peoples as equal partners in all stages of data collection, including planning, implementation, analysis and dissemination, access and return, with the appropriate resourcing and capacity-building for achieving this objective. Data collection must respond to the priorities and aims of the indigenous communities themselves
The Permanent Forum reiterates the call, made at its fifth and eleventh sessions, upon United Nations agencies and funds to conduct and support regional and international human rights training programmes aimed at building the capacity and advocacy skills of indigenous youth. The Forum further recommends the use of youth forums, social media and other popular cultural forms of communication to disseminate information and training material on the rights of indigenous youth and to facilitate consultation processes at the national and international levels.
The Forum recommends that the Inter-Agency Support Group discuss how to promote the cross-cutting issue of children and youth.
The Permanent Forum requests that UNICEF and UNESCO support intercultural and bilingual education programmes in conjunction with the indigenous peoples concerned, paying special attention to the right of girls to primary and secondary education.
The Forum decides to form a working group, including experts on statistics, to set directions for future statistical work, including that of the United Nations Statistics Division, and also decides that representatives from the Forum shall participate in scientific meetings to improve statistics in this area of work, such as the upcoming meeting sponsored by the International Association of Official Statisticians meeting, to be held in New Zealand on 14 and 15 April 2005, on the theme "Measuring small and indigenous populations".
The Permanent Forum fully supports plans by indigenous peoples’ organizations and networks in Asia to undertake assessments of how peace agreements that affect them are being implemented in specific countries, and calls on donor agencies to support those initiatives.
The Permanent Forum requests that UNICEF prepare a report on the state of the world’s children, with a thematic focus on indigenous children. The report should give special attention to the implementation by Member States of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and general comment No. 11 (2009) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on indigenous children and their rights under the Convention. Furthermore, the Forum requests UNICEF to begin to disaggregate data on indigenous children, including from its existing database.
The Forum welcomes the inclusion in the 2003 Ibero-American Summit of a focus on indigenous children, and recommends that UNICEF report to the Forum on the results of the Summit in that area, and to indicate how lessons can be learned and policy approaches improved concerning indigenous children in other parts of the world with indigenous peoples, specifically Asia and Africa.
The Permanent Forum urges States to take the measures at the national level necessary for the prevention of self-harm and suicide among indigenous children and youth, in particular by promoting the training of experts in the field of psychology who focus on issues specific to indigenous peoples. Such special training should take into account economic, historical, social, ecological and other factors, such as the loss of indigenous languages, cultures and lands.