Displaying 1 - 12 of 313
Paragraph Number: 15
Session: 2 (2003)
Full Text:

Aware of the massive exodus of indigenous youth to the alien environments of cities around the world and the discrimination, socio-economic hardships, weakened family networks and drug abuse, inter alia, affecting those youngsters and "street children", the Forum requests the World Bank, the ILO and UNICEF to conduct an in-depth comparative study of legal frameworks and social programmes addressing indigenous urban youth in selected countries. The study should assess key problems and best practices and should provide recommendations for the formulation of policies and strategies for future action.

Area of Work: Indigenous Children and Youth

Addressee: UNICEF

Paragraph Number: 64
Session: 10 (2011)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum requests that UNICEF, when completing its strategic policy framework on indigenous peoples, include indigenous youth in the design of the policy. In addition, particular attention is needed to reflect the diversity among indigenous children and to focus on vulnerable groups, such as victims of human trafficking and child pornography, as well as groups facing manifold discrimination based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.

Area of Work: Indigenous Children and Youth, Cooperation

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 43
Session: 16 (2017)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum recommends that States collaborate with indigenous peoples to ensure adequate resources to design and fully implement HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C programmes that address the social, economic and cultural determinants of health for HIV prevention, care and treatment in indigenous populations, in particular indigenous women and youth.

Area of Work: Health

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 19
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:

Member States should consider the adoption and full implementation of comprehensive national indigenous education policies based on the following goals:

Participation:
a) Establishing effective arrangements for the participation of indigenous parents and community members in decisions regarding the planning, delivery and evaluation of education services for their children, young people and other community members;
b) Increasing the number of indigenous people employed as educational administrators, teachers, coaches, officials, curriculum advisers, teacher’s assistants, home-school liaison officers and other education workers, including community members engaged in teaching indigenous culture, history and contemporary society, and indigenous languages;
c) Developing arrangements for the provision of independent advice from indigenous communities regarding educational decisions at all levels;
d) Achieving the participation of indigenous children, young people and adults in education for a period similar to that of other students;
Access:
e) Ensuring that indigenous children, young people and adults have access to all levels of education (including adult education) on a basis comparable to that available to other citizens;
Attainment:
f) Enabling indigenous students to attain skills and graduation rates up to the same standard as other students throughout the compulsory and non-compulsory schooling years;
g) Developing teaching forms and curricula based on mother tongue (additive learning) in primary and secondary education (should be mandatory in order to achieve goal (f) above);
h) Developing curricula for both primary and secondary education which reflect the insights and usefulness of indigenous knowledge systems and are sensitive to indigenous values. Curricula should:
i) Incorporate indigenous histories, traditional knowledge and spiritual values;
ii) Integrate indigenous oral traditions, myths and writings, acknowledging these as unique parts of world heritage;
Indigenous languages, proficiency in the national language, literacy and numeracy :
i) Developing programmes based on the child’s mother tongue (first language) as a foundation for learning and aiming at the maintenance and continued use of indigenous languages;
j) Enabling the attainment of proficiency in the commonly used national language and at least one international language, and numeracy competencies by all indigenous students, including indigenous adults, giving particular attention to indigenous women based on the framework of the United Nations Decade of Literacy;
Capacity-building:
k) Providing community education services which will enable indigenous peoples to develop the skills to manage the development of their communities;
l) Providing education and training services to develop the skills of indigenous people to participate in educational decision-making;
Appreciation, understanding and respect for indigenous cultures:
m) Enabling all students, both indigenous and non-indigenous, at all levels of education, to have an appreciation and understanding of and respect for traditional and contemporary indigenous histories, cultures and identities;
Anti-racism strategies:
n) Promoting anti-racism education, including strategies to empower young people to deal with racism in the compulsory schooling curriculum;
Cultural, social and economic development in education:
o) Indigenous peoples should be resourced and supported to establish their own education systems, including schools, should they so choose. Also, traditional indigenous education and its structures should be respected and supported;
Education for indigenous peoples in custody or detention:
p) Given the overrepresentation of indigenous youth and adults in detention, the Forum urges States to consider culturally relevant and appropriate education for indigenous peoples in detention centres;
q) The Forum asks that education plans, programmes and policies be implemented especially for indigenous girls, boys and women.

Area of Work: Education

Addressee: WHO

Paragraph Number: 69
Session: 8 (2009)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum welcomes the global Stop TB Partnership, which is housed within the World Health Organization (WHO). It urges the Partnership to ensure that indigenous peoples’ concerns are fully included and that they participate in the decision-making body in implementing programmes and projects.

Area of Work: Health

Addressee: IFAD

Paragraph Number: 166
Session: 5 (2006)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum supports the willingness of IFAD to consider continuing to operate the World Bank’s Grants Facility for Indigenous Peoples. It recommends that IFAD make every effort to substantially enhance this Facility through its own grant funding mechanism as well as through seeking the contributions of other international financial institutions as well as bilateral and multilateral donors.

Area of Work: Education

Addressee: UNFPA

Paragraph Number: 55, 56
Session: 17 (2018)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum welcomes the study presented by UNFPA, in collaboration with CHIRAPAQ (Centro de Culturas Indígenas del Perú), entitled “Progress and challenges regarding the recommendations of the Forum on sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence”. The Permanent Forum invites UNFPA to make efforts to disseminate the findings of the study at the global, regional and country levels among Member States, United Nations mechanisms and indigenous organizations. The Forum also invites UNFPA to engage in concerted dialogue wit h the nine Member States that were part of the study on next steps to put into action the recommendations of the study, and to report to the Forum at its eighteenth session on progress made.

Area of Work: Indigenous Women, Health

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 48
Session: 4 (2005)
Full Text:

States should:
(a) Endorse intercultural education as national policy priority to ensure equal access for indigenous children to quality and culturally appropriate primary education, as stipulated in the Convention on the Right of the Child; (b) Increase substantially State budgetary allocations in order to meet Millennium Development Goal 2 for indigenous children; c) Increase funding for Goal 2 for indigenous children through bilateral and multilateral cooperation; (d) Review current national curricula and textbooks to erase culturally discriminatory materials and enhance knowledge of indigenous cultures; (e) Establish effective arrangements for the participation of indigenous parents and community members in decisions regarding the planning, delivery and evaluation of education services for their children, including in the designing and implementation of their own education at all levels, including developing appropriate teaching materials and methods; (f) Ensure an increase in the number of indigenous persons in the educational sectors, including in policy, administration, teaching indigenous culture, history and contemporary society, indigenous languages and production of educational materials; (g) Ensure that indigenous children have access to free primary quality education; (h) Eliminate national policies and practices that create further difficulties for indigenous children to enjoy their right to education, such as the request for birth certificates for the enrolment of children and the refusal to accept indigenous names and traditional dress in schools; (i) Develop bilingual and culturally appropriate primary education for indigenous children to reduce dropout rates. The mother tongue must be the first learning language and the national language the second language; curricula should reflect indigenous peoples' holistic worldviews, knowledge systems, histories, spiritual values and physical activities, physical education and sports; (j) Recognize that isolation is a major obstacle that prevents indigenous peoples from fully enjoying their right to education. States should establish best practices, such as residential or boarding schools, where they have worked positively, and mobile and seasonal schools or the use of technologies, such as remote teaching and the Internet, to reach the most isolated and remote indigenous communities; (k) support enrolment of indigenous persons in teacher-training programs, colleges and relevant higher educational institutions; (l) Develop school curricula for indigenous peoples in cooperation with other Governments at the regional level in order to maximize the sustainable use of resources in this area; (m) Develop monitoring guidelines and indicators for achieving Goal 2 regarding indigenous children and set benchmarks in that regard; (n) In the context of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the achievement of primary universal education, the Forum recommends that States, the United Nations system and other intergovernmental organizations pay attention to intercultural bilingual education for indigenous peoples at the preschool, primary and tertiary levels

Area of Work: MDGs, Education

Addressee: UNICEF

Paragraph Number: 100
Session: 7 (2008)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum welcomes the recognition by UNICEF of the valuable contributions indigenous children and youth can make in their local communities to ensure the sustainability of climate change adaptation and mitigation plans. The Forum urges the Fund to continue to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on indigenous children and youth, and requests that it ensure the effective participation of indigenous children and youth in the discussions on and solutions to environmental issues in accordance with article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Area of Work: Environment, Indigenous Children and Youth
Paragraph Number: 89
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:

The goals of the Forum in this area are the promotion of cooperation, the exchange of information and the development of partnerships, as well as to improve coordination by facilitating regular contacts and reports. The Forum intends to address and report on this theme on an annual basis. The Forum, reaffirming its recommendations on health made at its first and second reports, in the spirit of the theme of its third session (Indigenous women), recommends that all relevant United Nations entities, especially WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments:
(a)Fully incorporate the principle that health is a fundamental human right in all health policies and programmes, and foster rights-based approaches to health, including treaty rights, the right to culturally acceptable and appropriate services and indigenous women’s reproductive rights, and stop programmes of forced sterilization and abortion, which can constitute ethnic genocide;
(b)Further develop and disseminate information about innovative strategies in health services to indigenous women, informed by indigenous concepts and understanding of health, wellness, healing, illness, disease, sexuality and birthing so as to ensure universal and accessible health-care services for indigenous women and girl children, and make available adequate financial and technical support for comprehensive, community-based, primary health services and health education, incorporating traditional indigenous components;
(c)Train and employ qualified indigenous women to design, administer and manage their own health-care programmes;
(d) Set up monitoring mechanisms for indigenous communities to report abuses and neglect with the health system to national health authorities, and put in place the legal framework to effectively address these issues;
(e) Encourage States to include and accredit traditional, indigenous health practitioners (physicians), including traditional birth attendants (midwives), and integrate them into state health-care systems, and give full recognition to the medicinal knowledge and medicines of these indigenous practitioners;
(f) Augment HIV/AIDS programmes by providing educational materials in indigenous languages and by using specially trained indigenous HIV/AIDS health workers to conduct outreach services and home care to indigenous communities, including voluntary testing for HIV/AIDS;
(g) Ensure that indigenous peoples, especially women, have access to all information relating to their medical treatment and to secure their prior informed consent to medical treatment;
(h) Provide appropriate health services and protection services, including safe houses, to displaced refugee and migrant women and women and girl children victimized by trafficking for prostitution;
(i) Implement the recommendations of the international consultation on health of indigenous peoples, held in Geneva at WHO in 1999, with special emphasis on the recommendations concerning the health of women and girls and the role of women in health care, indigenous knowledge and service provisions;
(j)Develop, in conjunction with indigenous women health providers, programmes to inform and sensitize indigenous women and men about cultural practices which have negative impacts on health, including female genital mutilation, child marriages and violence against women and the girl child in the domestic context, in order to encourage them to take precautions and safeguard the health and well being of the indigenous family;
(k)Ensure that the treatment of diseases is balanced by the promotion of health through the support of physical activity, sports and physical education in order to address escalating health concerns through prevention.

Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 72
Session: 2 (2003)
Full Text:

The Forum invites UNDP and the Statistical Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs to present a report at the 2004 session of the Forum, setting forth the progress made to date on the Millennium Development Goals, with special focus on alleviating poverty and its affects on indigenous peoples and communities.

Area of Work: Health

Addressee: UNICEF

Paragraph Number: 16
Session: 14 (2015)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Children’s Fund develop and adopt a comprehensive and distinct policy on indigenous children and young people, taking into account the human rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration and in consultation and collaboration with indigenous peoples and indigenous children and youth organizations in particular.

Area of Work: Indigenous Children and Youth