Indigenous persons with disabilities face exceptionally difficult barriers both because they are indigenous and because they are disabled. The Permanent Forum recommends that States develop and provide full access to educational opportunities on an equitable basis and without discrimination for indigenous persons, as recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In particular, the Forum recommends that sign language education curricula be developed, in consultation with deaf indigenous persons, which reflect their cultures, issues, needs and preferences. Where there is State or international cooperation on education, indigenous persons with disabilities should be included. The Forum recommends that countries that have not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities do so urgently.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to work in partnership with other members of the Inter-Agency Support Group and donors to organize regional workshops for the purposes of information exchange and capacity-building among Governments, indigenous peoples and local communities and other stakeholders with regard to the proposed international regime on access and benefit-sharing. In addition, the secretariat is called upon to provide financial support for indigenous networks to disseminate information, in appropriate and accessible languages, and through appropriate media, to indigenous communities on this issue.
The Permanent Forum urges the Governments of Canada and the United States to eliminate all assimilation policies that further exacerbate the economic and other disparities between indigenous peoples and the rest of the population.
In approaching Millennium Development Goal 2, "Achieve universal primary education: ensure that all boys and girls complete primary school", especially for indigenous children, the Forum recalls the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, the International Charter of Traditional Games and Sports and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention against Discrimination in Education
The Permanent Forum also recommends to Member States that the development agenda beyond 2015 recognize, protect and strengthen indigenous peoples’ collective rights, in particular the right to land, territories and natural resources.
The Forum notes that there is a need for capacity-building in national and local government as well indigenous communities in the areas within the Forum’s mandate, and recommends that various parts of the United Nations system, including the International Labour Organization and the secretariat of the Forum, cooperate to provide technical assistance in that regard at the request of Governments and indigenous communities.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the initiation of a national dialogue to discuss and achieve key constitutional reforms in the field of justice in Guatemala, and encourages the recognition of indigenous justice systems. The Forum urges Guatemala and the private sector, in addition to the World Bank and other international economic institutions, to acknowledge that serious efforts require structural economic and social reforms rather than rapid growth of gross domestic product in order to reverse widespread and growing poverty among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. Such crucial reforms must ensure more equitable distribution and access to traditional lands for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala, consistent with the rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration, and on the basis of respect for and legal recognition of their collective rights, including their self-determined development. Furthermore, the Forum calls upon Guatemala to reinforce the effective and full implementation of the Peace Accords.
The Permanent Forum encourages the Commission for Social Development to consider indigenous peoples’ issues at the fifty-sixth session of the Commission as part of its agenda related to the 2017-2018 priority theme “Strategies for eradicating poverty to achieve sustainable development for all”.
The year 2022 is the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture. The Permanent Forum therefore recommends that FAO prepare a study on the impacts of industrial fishing on the rights of indigenous peoples in regard to traditional fishing. The Permanent Forum invites the Organization to share the findings of said study at the twenty-third session of the Permanent Forum, to be held in 2024.
The Permanent Forum decides to authorize a three-day international expert group workshop on indigenous peoples’ rights, corporate accountability and the extractive industries, and requests that the results of the meeting be reported to the Forum at its eighth session, in 2009. The report of that workshop can feed into the eighteenth and nineteenth sessions of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which will address the themes of mining, chemicals, waste management and sustainable consumption and production patterns, and contribute to the review by the eighteenth session of the Commission.
The Permanent Forum wishes to express its appreciation to the Inter-Agency Support Group for its contribution to the work of the Forum, and encourages all United Nations agencies to join the Group, particularly those whose area of work is of special relevance for the rights and well-being of indigenous peoples, such as the World Health Organization.
States should take effective measures to eliminate violence against indigenous peoples by studying the root causes of conflict and human rights abuses, developing indicators and methodologies for risk assessment and early warning mechanisms and improving national legislation for the administration of justice with regard to the perpetrators of war crimes.