The Permanent Forum urges the World Food Programme to respect the habitual diet of indigenous peoples and to avoid the introduction of foreign foods of low nutritional quality in indigenous peoples’ communities. Furthermore, the Permanent Forum urges the World Food Programme to ensure that its methods of intervention are sensitive to indigenous peoples’ social fabric and respectful of their perceptions of the humanitarian-development nexus.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction take the lead, in collaboration with OHCHR, UNFPA and WHO, in conducting an initial study on the global scope of past forced sterilization programmes of indigenous peoples and determine whether such programmes continue to exist, and report to the Forum at its nineteenth session on the progress made.
The Permanent Forum commends UNICEF and UNFPA for their work to combat female genital mutilation practices and urges them to continue their efforts with indigenous peoples and their communities.
The Forum recommends that the Global Fund review their funding strategy in order to include access by indigenous non-governmental organizations and health providers for community-based culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS programmes.
The Permanent Forum also welcomes the launching by FAO, during the twenty-seventh session of its Technical Committee on Agriculture, in 2020, of the global hub on indigenous peoples’ food systems. It recommends that FAO continue to facilitate the work of the global hub. In addition, the Permanent Forum welcomes the White/Whipala paper on indigenous peoples’ food systems, which was drafted under the coordination of the global hub, and which has been accepted as one of the scientific papers that will serve to inform constituents at the Summit.
The Permanent Forum reiterates previous recommendations that WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments, fully incorporate a cultural perspective into health policies and programmes and reproductive health services aimed at providing indigenous women with quality health care, including emergency obstetric care, voluntary family planning and skilled attendance at birth. The roles of traditional midwives should be re-evaluated and expanded so that they may assist indigenous women during their reproductive health processes and act as cultural brokers between health systems and indigenous peoples.