The Forum reiterates its recommendation that the Economic and Social Council approve the creation, under the auspices of the Forum, of a three-year working group on free, prior informed consent and participatory research guidelines, with the participation of stakeholders concerned, namely Governments, indigenous peoples’ organizations, corporations and States and the United Nations system, with combined funding provided partly by the regular budget and partly through the Voluntary Fund, the World Bank and corporations, that includes a focus on how free, prior informed consent and participatory research guidelines relate to economic, social and environmental projects and the protection of indigenous knowledge and natural resources.
According to articles 25 to 36 of the Declaration, States shall uphold the right to the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples and avoid, minimize and adjudicate disputes concerning land, territory or resources arising from extractive industries, large-scale water, energy and infrastructure projects, and agricultural investments.
The Forum recommends that executive heads of United Nations agencies, funds and programmes that have not yet done so adopt policies on indigenous peoples and designate focal points for addressing indigenous issues relevant to each respective agency’s mandate in order to facilitate the mainstreaming of indigenous issues within the United Nations system.
The Permanent Forum is concerned about the recent grant by the World Bank of a waiver to its indigenous peoples policy (operational policy 4.10) and requests that the World Bank ensure that waivers will not be used in the future. Furthermore, the Forum requests that the Bank conduct a review of the impact on indigenous peoples of the waiver issued to the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania Programme and present its findings to the Forum
. Recognizing that the creative economy is among the most dynamically developing economic sectors, and noting its capacity for the sustainable development, the Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Industrial Development Organization develop, in cooperation with indigenous peoples and Member States, a comprehensive programme for the development of indigenous businesses and creative industries, including through capacity-building programmes on entrepreneurship for indigenous peoples and mechanisms for financial support to start-ups. In that regard, funding from Member States for the development of start-up incubators based on cultural heritage, traditional occupations, crafts and knowledge is encouraged.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Commission on the Status of Women consider the empowerment of indigenous women as a priority theme of its sixty-first session, in 2017, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration.
The Permanent Forum urges UNDP to strengthen its institutional capacity on indigenous peoples’ issues by establishing a task force to serve as a liaison mechanism between headquarters and focal points on indigenous issues at the country level. Furthermore, the Forum recommends that these focal points be specialists on indigenous peoples’ issues.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the President of the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session to share with its members the main conclusions and recommendations emanating from the half-day dialogue on the World Conference held by the members of the Forum within the framework of its eleventh session.
The Permanent Forum calls upon United Nations agencies, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, other multilateral financial institutions and bilateral donors to establish clear policy commitments to protect the ancestral lands of indigenous peoples.
Given the unique role of information and communications technology companies in the design, development and use of contemporary language technologies, the Permanent Forum reiterates its invitation to the private sector to contribute to the International Decade. The Permanent Forum encourages these companies to continue to develop digital platforms, in cooperation with indigenous peoples and academic institutions, in order to compile information archives for the preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages, language corpora, speech recognition, machine translation and synthesis tools, digital dictionaries and online courses.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the capacity-building efforts being carried out by the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity with the Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network for the Latin American and Caribbean Region, thanks to the patronage of the Government of Spain, and encourages other donor Governments to consider sponsoring similar efforts in other regions, in particular in Africa and in the Pacific region.
The Permanent Forum notes the engagement of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the preparations for the World Conference and recommends that the Union organize meetings of parliamentarians at the global, regional and country levels to discuss the adoption of legislative and administrative measures affecting indigenous peoples and to encourage the participation of parliamentarians, including indigenous parliamentarians, in the World Conference and its preparatory processes. Such meetings should draw upon the positive developments from the conference facilitated by the Union that was held in Chiapas, Mexico, in 2010 and that led to the adoption of the Chiapas Declaration.