The Permanent Forum urges Governments in the Arctic, Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia to fully implement the relevant international obligations related to environmental and social safeguards to assure the conservation of nature and access to natural resources for indigenous peoples within their territories in accordance with Sustainable Development Goals 12, 14 and 15.
With regard to paragraph 139 of the report of the Permanent Forum on its sixth session, the Forum calls upon Governments, indigenous peoples organizations, regional administrations and local self-governance organs of the countries of the Arctic region to take an active part in the discussion on the Arctic region at the eighth session of the Forum. The Forum urges the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations to give special consideration to applications from indigenous participants from the Arctic region.
The Forum invites the agencies and Governments submitting contributions also to indicate in future the challenges that they face in the implementation of the Forum's recommendations
The Forum decides to devote special attention to the follow-up to global United Nations conferences, and in that regard requests its secretariat to prepare a technical background paper.
The Permanent Forum notes the importance of several concurrent United Nations Decades that are of importance to indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations entities responsible for the international decades declared by the General Assembly, such as the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018–2028, and the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, ensure good communication and coordinate efforts regarding the participation of indigenous peoples and their issues. In this regard, the Permanent Forum recommends that the relevant United Nations entities report to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which, in turn, is invited to prepare a study on the funding, modalities and scale of indigenous peoples’ participation in all four Decades. The Permanent Forum further invites Member States to support and fund cooperation during the four Decades to ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the President of the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session convene a two-day interactive thematic event immediately prior to the World Conference, with the participation of Member States and representatives of indigenous peoples, the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, to allocate more time for an interactive dialogue and build commitment from Member States, the United Nations system and other stakeholders, and the Permanent Forum.
As consistently suggested during the dialogue with Member States, the Permanent Forum invites States to consider ways of addressing disputes between them and indigenous peoples. Suggestions included, among others, setting up independent conflict resolution mechanisms to resolve disputes between States and indigenous peoples (in accordance with article 27 of the Declaration and paragraph 21 of the outcome document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples), implementing the Forum’s recommendations for better addressing such disputes and increasing the involvement of indigenous peoples in decision-making processes.
The Permanent Forum decides to conduct a half-day discussion during its eighth session on the subject of “Countries of the Arctic region”, with the broad participation of indigenous communities, regional administrations and institutions of local self-governance.
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.
The Permanent Forum invites the newly established Facilitative Working Group of the local communities and indigenous peoples platform to collaborate closely with bodies outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on matters relating to climate change and indigenous peoples, in accordance with its mandate (Conference of the Parties decision 2/CP.24, para. 20).
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.