The Permanent Forum encourages all Member States to contribute to the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations as an essential way to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples in all United Nations meetings and to increase their capacity at the international and local levels.
The Permanent Forum recommends to the President of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly the continuation of the practice, established during the sixty-sixth session of the Assembly, of appointing a State representative and an indigenous peoples’ representative to conduct inclusive informal consultations on his behalf in order to build consensus on the themes of the round table and panel discussions and the content of the outcome document of the World Conference, as well as to ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in the process.
The Permanent Forum highly appreciates the initiatives undertaken by IFAD to highlight the need to give a high profile to indigenous issues within the organization and globally by nominating an Assistant President on Special Assignment for Indigenous and Tribal Issues. The Permanent Forum recommends that IFAD ensure that the gains made so far are sustained in the future and urges other organizations and international financial institutions to follow the Fund’s example by assigning a person in a senior management position to coordinate indigenous issues within their organization.
The Permanent Forum also calls on the United Nations to ensure the active participation of indigenous peoples at the High-level Plenary Meeting of the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly, to be held in September 2010.
The Permanent Forum urges States, United Nations agencies and indigenous peoples’ organizations to collaborate with UN-Habitat and other United Nations agencies in their development of policy guidelines for local authorities on urban indigenous issues.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the Fund’s country strategic opportunities programmes as an important instrument for actively focusing on indigenous issues at the national level. The Permanent Forum recommends that IFAD construct mechanisms to secure the complementary use of the national operative planning instruments and the new institutional policy on engaging with indigenous peoples. The alignment of those instruments with the future institutional policy on indigenous issues is important for the mainstreaming of indigenous peoples’ issues within IFAD.
The Permanent Forum is concerned about the lack of data on indigenous peoples across the United Nations system, especially with regard to target 17.18 of the Sustainable Development Goals concerning the development of inclusive policies that leave no one behind. The Permanent Forum recognizes the need for establishing standards on the collection, analysis and dissemination of statistical information related to indigenous peoples and will engage in efforts with relevant stakeholders to achieve these ends. As a first step, the Permanent Forum invites United Nations entities to make their statistics on indigenous peoples accessible.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the themes for the round tables of the World Conference be decided by Member States and indigenous peoples through the preparatory processes. The Declaration provides a substantial framework for the development of the focus of the World Conference.
The Permanent Forum urges the Economic and Social Council to decide that the report of the twelfth session should be presented to it by the Chair, or a designate thereof, of the Forum.
The Forum decides to appoint Yuri Boychenko and Parshuram Tamang, members of the Forum, as Special Rapporteurs, to prepare, without financial implications, a working paper on current practices and methods of work to be submitted at the fifth session of the Permanent Forum
The global engagement of indigenous peoples at the international level has led to some positive institutional developments, including the establishment of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples can play an important role in the fight against climate change. Member States and United Nations entities should ensure that any activities related to the use of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples respect indigenous peoples’ own protocols and consent agreements for managing access to their traditional knowledge. Strengthening and ensuring the full participation of indigenous peoples at all levels is also critical for the design and implementation of climate policies, plans, programmes and projects at the local, national and global levels.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Statistics Commission advocate for the promotion of indigenous peoples’ issues in the 2010 round of population and housing censuses and the Demographic and Health Survey, and other surveys and censuses, taking into account the global synthesis report on indicators of well-being, poverty and sustainability submitted at the seventh session of the Forum. The Forum calls on all relevant United Nations agencies to support this initiative.