The Permanent Forum encourages Member States with bilateral development agencies to enact, in accordance with the Declaration, policies that ensure the inclusion of indigenous peoples as partners in the development process, with a meaningful role in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all projects that affect their territories, rights and livelihoods
The Permanent Forum requests ILO, IFAD and the United Nations Development Programme to prepare a study, in collaboration with indigenous peoples, summarizing the experience of implementing programmes for indigenous peoples on socioeconomic development, focussing on best practices in entrepreneurship and creative industries, and to present it to the Permanent Forum at its twenty -third session, to be held in 2024.
Furthermore, States should strengthen measures, systems and resources to effectively address all forms of violence against indigenous women, such as female genital mutilation; child marriage; sexual abuse; forced labour; modern slavery; domestic, institutional and political violence, including in the context of forced displacement; sexual exploitation; trafficking; armed conflict; and the militarization of indigenous lands and territories.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the United Nations Development Group guidelines on indigenous peoples’ issues, and encourages United Nations agencies to actively disseminate, promote and implement those guidelines, particularly among their country offices. In that regard, the Forum urges the Development Group to give priority to the promotion, use and implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the most universal, comprehensive and fundamental instrument on indigenous peoples’ rights, and to fully reflect this in the next edition of the Group’s guidelines. The Forum also recommends that donor agencies consider providing financial assistance to implement the guidelines.
The Permanent Forum recognizes the efforts of WIPO to support Indigenous Peoples in taking part in its processes, including through training programmes and support from its voluntary fund for Indigenous Peoples. It urges WIPO and its member States to ensure the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in meetings, including the Diplomatic Conference in 2024 and its related preparatory meetings, on one or more international legal instruments relating to traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expression, genetic resources and folklore.
Owing to the cross-cutting nature of gender equality, it is also critical that gender perspectives be fully integrated into the implementation and monitoring of all the other objectives associated with the United Nations Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the Arctic Council to provide the indigenous permanent participants in the Council with adequate financial resources, enabling them to effectively participate in all relevant activities of the Council.
The Permanent Forum urges relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, including FAO, IFAD, ILO, UNEP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, UN-Women and the World Bank, to recognize and support this form of cultivation.
The Forum recommends that immediate steps be taken within the framework of the Commission on Sustainable Development to protect water from privatization and from bilateral and multilateral governmental agreements and other incursions that affect the integrity of waters and impoverish communities, particularly indigenous women. The Forum recommends that the Commission appoint a special rapporteur for the protection of water to gather testimony directly from indigenous communities of the world impacted by or targeted for water privatization, diversion, toxic contamination, pollution, commodification and other environmental injustices that damage natural and potable water supplies
The Forum takes note of the adoption by the Commission on Sustainable Development of a substantive agenda for the next several years, and decides to prepare inputs to the Commission according to the calendar adopted by the Commission. In preparation for the first cluster for 2004-2005 on water, sanitation and human settlements, the Forum recommends that its secretariat prepare, without financial implications, a brief draft position paper and to submit it to the Forum at its third session.
The Permanent Forum recommends that relevant States, in cooperation with the indigenous peoples concerned, establish indigenous peoples’ centres in urban areas to address their medical needs and provide legal and other forms of assistance.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Government of Paraguay should remain firm in its commitment to cooperating with indigenous peoples’ organizations in order to find emergency solutions to the extremely serious situation of the indigenous communities that have been wholly dispossessed of their land, and to implement policies to ensure the reconstitution of their territory.