The Permanent Forum calls on States to ensure that indigenous peoples that are undertaking their own mitigation measures are provided with policy support, technical assistance, funding and capacity-building in order to deepen their knowledge on climate change and to allow them to implement more effective mitigation and adaptation strategies. They should gain benefits from the environmental services derived from their territories and resources. Processes and mechanisms for the valuation of these environmental services, and methods that allow them to get adequate benefits, should be developed jointly with them. Efforts to create better documentation of good practices in mitigation and adaptation and to replicate and upscale these practices should likewise be supported.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), entitled “Linking indigenous peoples with regional development”, which involves indigenous leaders and communities in Australia, Canada and Sweden, and encourages OECD and its member States to expand the project.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) advance data and research on the challenges that indigenous women and girls face in realizing their right to bodily autonomy and the right to be free from violence, including reproductive coercion and in birthing practices. Furthermore, the Permanent Forum invites UNFPA to prepare a study on indigenous women’s bodily autonomy, with the participation of indigenous women, and to present its findings at the twenty-third session of the Permanent Forum, to be held in 2024.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the World Bank engage the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Permanent Forum in the development of guidance for the implementation of the new performance standard 7: Indigenous peoples, of the International Finance Corporation performance standards on environmental and social sustainability.
In the context of the United Nations system-wide coherence, in particular gender equality architecture reform, the Permanent Forum recommends that States and the United Nations system ensure the inclusion of the priorities and demands of indigenous women.
Noting that the Economic and Social Council, at its substantive session of 2003, will devote its high-level segment to rural development, the Forum recommends that the Council, in formulating its conclusions, take into account the unique cultural identities of indigenous peoples and the necessity for their meaningful participation in the planning, implementation and evaluation of programmes dealing with rural development.
Member States must urgently address violence against indigenous peoples, including State violence, gender-based violence, forced assimilation and forced child removals, discrimination in the justice system and other forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on gender, religion, disability, age and LGBTIQ identity. The Forum encourages the Expert Mechanism, at its earliest convenience, to engage with the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, and with the participation of indigenous peoples, regarding the removal of indigenous children.