The Permanent Forum thanks the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional of the Government of Spain, the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, the Swedish International Biodiversity Programme and IFAD for their financial support for the regional, thematic and international seminars on indicators relevant to indigenous peoples, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Millennium Development Goals, and urges other donors to contribute to this important work.
The Permanent Forum requests all States to include developments relating to the rights of indigenous peoples in their regular reports to the Human Rights Council under the universal periodic review mechanism.
Indigenous peoples have a profound relationship with their environment. This includes their distinct rights to water. The Permanent Forum urges States to guarantee those rights, including the right to access to safe, clean, accessible and affordable water for personal, domestic and community use. Water should be treated as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good. The manner in which the right to water is realized must be sustainable for present and future generations. Moreover, indigenous peoples’ access to water resources on their ancestral lands must be protected from encroachment and pollution. Indigenous peoples must have the resources to design, deliver and control their access to water.
The Permanent Forum urges States to review their policies on biofuel industries, which, in the name of remedying the impacts of climate change, are resulting in the deforestation of large forest areas and the displacement of indigenous peoples. That increases the vulnerability of indigenous communities and in particular of those living in voluntary isolation.
The active participation of indigenous peoples and indigenous organizations should be ensured when matters affecting their rights are discussed by the Human Rights Council and any subsidiary bodies or processes that it decides to establish.
The Permanent Forum recommends that agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system, in collaboration with indigenous peoples ’ organizations, monitor the high levels of global violence and threats directed at indigenous women human rights defenders. The Forum calls for an immediate halt to the criminalization,
incarceration, intimidation, coercion and assassination of, and death threats to, all indigenous human and environmental rights defenders.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the annual report of OHCHR to the Permanent Forum provide a summary of relevant reports, decisions and recommendations of the Human Rights Council, its subsidiary bodies and special procedures, as well as the universal periodic review working group, United Nations treaty bodies and other relevant United Nations reports and conferences.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States establish, where it does not already exist, a national dialogue with indigenous peoples on human rights, based on the Declaration.
The Permanent Forum denounces the extrajudicial killings of indigenous leaders and activists in several Asian States, as reported by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and urges the concerned countries to investigate these reported cases and to provide redress to the relatives of the victims.
The Permanent Forum reiterates its position, as stated in the report on its twentieth session (E/2021/43, para. 10), urging Colombia to promote and guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples, in particular by achieving the goals and indicators set out in the “ethnic chapter” of the peace agreement. In this regard, the Permanent Forum wishes to offer its support, within the terms of its mandate, to facilitate dialogues between the Government of Colombia and indigenous peoples.
During its tenth session, the Permanent Forum emphasized that redefining the relationship between indigenous peoples and the State as an important way to understand the doctrine of discovery and a way to develop a vision of the future for reconciliation, peace and justice. To that end, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a strong human rights framework and standards for the redress of such false doctrines, notably in articles 3, 28 and 37. The Permanent Forum encourages the conduct of the processes of reconciliation “in accordance with the principles of justice, democracy, and respect for human rights, equality, non-discrimination, good governance and good faith”.
The Permanent Forum recommends that relevant United Nations agencies dealing with indigenous peoples’ issues should take action on the inclusion of indigenous persons with disabilities in all their activities, make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities, promote the increased participation of indigenous persons with disabilities in their annual sessions and consider having expert sessions on indigenous persons with disabilities.