The Permanent Forum reiterates its calls to Member States and international organizations to include Indigenous Peoples actively in policymaking forums and development agendas. This inclusion should extend to negotiations and management forums under multilateral environment agreements and other relevant platforms and processes focusing on issues affecting Indigenous Peoples and where their voices and knowledge guarantee significant contributions and outcomes for global sustainable development and the health of global ecosystems.
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States strengthen and implement legal and institutional frameworks that recognize and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories and resources and ensure their participation in decision-making processes. Such frameworks should adhere to the Declaration and Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization, ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent when development, environment, biodiversity and climate change programmes and projects are conducted on their lands and territories.
The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has analysed and discussed indigenous fishing rights in the seas on the basis of a report submitted by the Special Rapporteurs. As a result of those discussions, the Forum considers the protection of the material basis of the culture of indigenous peoples to be a part of international law that should be applied also to fishing rights in the seas, and recommends that States in which indigenous peoples live in coastal areas recognize indigenous peoples’ right to fish in the seas on the basis of historical use and international law. In that context, the Forum notes the ongoing consultations between the Government of Norway and the Sami Parliament and recommends that the Government recognize the right of the coastal Sami to fish in the seas on the basis of historical use and international law.
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 recommends that the Government of Paraguay should remain firm in its commitment to cooperating with indigenous peoples’ organizations in order to find emergency solutions to the extremely serious situation of the indigenous communities that have been wholly dispossessed of their land, and to implement policies to ensure the reconstitution of their territory.
The Permanent Forum recommends that Governments and States promote the creation of conditions for indigenous peoples that will enable them to maintain the forests in their traditional way and conserve their cultural identity, with priority accorded to indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation, strengthening their capacities and highlighting the value of ancestral knowledge related to native forests. The Forum further recommends that the traditional knowledge and traditional forest management practices and governance systems of indigenous peoples for the protection and use of their forests be recognized in all forest policies and climate-related forest initiatives.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the decision 2009/250 of the Economic and Social Council on a proposed amendment to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol, related to the traditional use of the coca leaf. The Forum recommends that Member States support this initiative, taking into account articles 11, 24 and 31 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States, the United Nations system and other intergovernmental organizations provide political, institutional and, in accordance with article 42 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, financial support to the efforts of indigenous peoples so that they may consolidate their own development models and concepts and practices of living well (for example sumak kawsay, suma qamaña, laman laka, gawis ay biag), which are underpinned by their indigenous cosmologies, philosophies, values, cultures and identities, as well as link efforts to implement the Declaration.
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 general capacity-building efforts on access and benefit-sharing in the African region carried out under Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) of Germany and encourages further efforts to bolster indigenous participation in those workshops and also in developing workshops specifically for indigenous peoples and local communities.
The Permanent Forum urges the Governments of Canada and the United States to eliminate all assimilation policies that further exacerbate the economic and other disparities between indigenous peoples and the rest of the population.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Plurinational State of Bolivia continue the implementation of specific policies in the areas of housing, health and education in order to benefit the freed communities, paying particular attention to those who have been subjected to servitude, and especially children and adolescents.