The Permanent Forum welcomes the “International Conference on Biological and Cultural Diversity: Diversity for Development and Development for Diversity” (8-10 June 2010, Montreal, Canada) as a useful dialogue on the interface of diversities and development and notes its goal to consider a future collaborative programme of work between the Secretariat of the Conference on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), other relevant agencies, including the Forum and relevant indigenous organizations and non-governmental organizations, and decides to send the Chair of the Forum to report on the outcomes of the ninth session of the Permanent Forum regarding the theme.
The Permanent Forum encourages the Government of Paraguay to continue to accept assistance from United Nations agencies and programmes and national cooperation agencies in order to develop policies aimed at the elimination of forced labour and other forms of servitude, especially in matters relating to the most urgent challenges: food, health, housing and education.
The Permanent Forum and the Inter-Agency Support Group on Indigenous Issues should continue to reflect on how best to ensure that the recommendations of the Forum are implemented by United Nations bodies and organizations, including proposals on how the recommendations should be packaged and information that indigenous peoples can use to influence decisions within the United Nations system.
The Forum recommends to States and the United Nations system the implementation of projects of agriculture, fishing, forestry, and arts and crafts production to diversify productive activities and family income sources and to contribute to reducing, according to their own will, the levels of internal and external migration of indigenous peoples, and to providing capacity-building in those areas, by:
(a) Promoting the knowledge, application and dissemination of appropriate technologies and indigenous peoples’ local products with certificates of origin to activate product activities, as well as the use, management and conservation of natural resources;
(b) Strengthening the capacities and potential of local human resources to train agricultural, fishery and forestry promoters that respond efficiently to the necessities of the families beneficiaries;
(c) Strengthening the institutional and entrepreneurial capacity of organizations of indigenous peoples to design operative and effective strategies so as to achieve sustainable development for the indigenous peoples of the world.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the important work of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean on its thirtieth anniversary. The Permanent Forum encourages Member States, United Nations entities and indigenous peoples to support strengthening the work of the Fund.
The Permanent Forum calls upon States to recognize indigenous peoples, where they exist, consistent with the provisions of the United Nations Declaration, in their legislation in order to gather statistical data thereon, especially in the area of allocation of land and other natural resources for traditional use.
The Forum recommends strengthening the mechanisms for collaboration with United Nations agencies and Governments, and monitoring compliance with and the implementation of its recommendations made to United Nations agencies and Governments.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the initiative of the World Bank in compiling and analysing disaggregated data on indigenous peoples, poverty and human development in South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and urges the World Bank to present the results of those studies to the seventh session of the Permanent Forum in 2008.
The Permanent Forum decides to authorize a three-day international expert group workshop on indigenous peoples’ rights, corporate accountability and the extractive industries, and requests that the results of the meeting be reported to the Forum at its eighth session, in 2009. The report of that workshop can feed into the eighteenth and nineteenth sessions of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which will address the themes of mining, chemicals, waste management and sustainable consumption and production patterns, and contribute to the review by the eighteenth session of the Commission.
The Forum intends to pursue the agenda of mainstreaming indigenous issues into the process of the Millennium Development Goals and applying the thematic approach to build up a three-year programme of work. The Forum intends moreover to focus on implementation and urges United Nations bodies, States and indigenous peoples to engage actively in the dialogue on these issues, sharing good practices and barriers to implementation.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States ensure that the participation of indigenous peoples in subnational and local decision-making bodies is based on equality and non-discrimination and on respecting indigenous peoples’ rights to choose their own representatives in accordance with their own procedures.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to work in partnership with other members of the Inter-Agency Support Group and donors to organize regional workshops for the purposes of information exchange and capacity-building among Governments, indigenous peoples and local communities and other stakeholders with regard to the proposed international regime on access and benefit-sharing. In addition, the secretariat is called upon to provide financial support for indigenous networks to disseminate information, in appropriate and accessible languages, and through appropriate media, to indigenous communities on this issue.