The Permanent Forum welcomes the resolution of the seventeenth Ibero-American summit of Heads of State which calls for a world conference on indigenous peoples, to be organized by the United Nations, and urges States to support this initiative at the General Assembly level.
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 reiterates its grave concerns about the situation of indigenous human rights defenders who continue to be harassed, criminalized, prosecuted or even killed for exercising their legitimate rights to protect their lands, territories and resources, especially in the context and activities of extractive industries. The Forum calls upon Member States to take a zero-tolerance approach to violence against indigenous human rights defenders, to develop and implement all measures necessary to respect and protect indigenous human rights defenders, to duly investigate any act against them and to prosecute those responsible to the full extent of the law.
The Permanent Forum calls upon Member States to support cross-border cultural communications and initiatives between indigenous peoples of the region to foster their common languages, heritage and traditional knowledge.
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 Permanent Forum invites the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food and the Special Rapporteur on the right to development to attend the eighth session of the Forum.