The Permanent Forum urges the funds, programmes and agencies of the United Nations system to cooperate with States and indigenous peoples in the development and implementation of national action plans, strategies and other measures that aim to achieve the ends of the Declaration, including by providing support for the advancement and adjudication of the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, territories and resources.
The Permanent Forum commends the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean for starting a regional initiative building on the Programme’s experience in Asia. The Forum recommends that the initiative be consolidated and that the Regional Bureau implement a regional programme to ensure cross-fertilization of good practices among countries and coherent policy approaches. The Forum encourages the Regional Bureau to strengthen its capacity and, together with the Inter-Agency Support Group, looks forward to supporting those efforts through specialized training workshops for United Nations country teams.
The Permanent Forum notes that in international law, the right to adequate food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger apply to everyone without discrimination. The Permanent Forum is concerned about the implementation gap between what is legally recognized and the reality. The right to food is frequently denied or violated, often as a result of systematic discrimination or the widespread lack of applicability of indigenous peoples’ rights. The Permanent Forum recommends that States engage in an inclusive and participatory process to ensure food sovereignty and security, in accordance with the principles of free, prior and informed consent, and develop standards and methodologies and cultural indicators to assess and address food sovereignty.
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
The Permanent Forum urges UNESCO to develop an indigenous peoples’ platform within the agency to ensure that UNESCO language programmes provide tangible benefits to indigenous communities and ensure that indigenous peoples are active in all aspects of the work of UNESCO.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the commitments and support of the Member States that have established action plans, in parallel with the Global Action Plan, that include support for transformative initiatives that strengthen and protect Indigenous languages, such as the establishment of universities of Indigenous Peoples’ languages in Mexico and Morocco and the efforts of Nordic and other countries in committing to engaging in digital communication and information technologies for Indigenous Peoples’ languages. For those Member States that have yet to develop an action plan, the Permanent Forum reiterates the call for Member States to initiate such plans, in full cooperation with Indigenous Peoples.
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 urges Member States and all other relevant actors at all levels, in cooperation with indigenous peoples, to issue their action plans by the end of 2022, and that they subsequently monitor their implementation and update them with specific measurement indicators every three years during the International Decade
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 congratulates the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for the approval of its policy on engagement with indigenous peoples, consistent with international standards, in particular with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Development Group guidelines. In the implementation of the policy, the Forum encourages the Trust Fund to establish an indigenous peoples’ forum at IFAD, as an example of a good practice to be followed by other United Nations agencies and other intergovernmental organizations.
The Permanent Forum recommends that, in view of the 2015 deadline for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, Member States and the United Nations system make use of the experiences and lessons learned and capture the priorities for development and well-being of indigenous peoples and include indigenous peoples in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the Goals.
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.