The Permanent Forum is concerned that HIV acquisition rates are higher in Indigenous communities than in the general population. The Permanent Forum encourages the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS to continue its focus on Indigenous Peoples.
The Permanent Forum urges States responsible for major sources of pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases to be accountable by enforcing and upholding stricter global pollution regulations that will apply to polluting parties.
The Permanent Forum calls upon all States to work with indigenous peoples to develop and implement right-to-health indicators, to utilize the findings in the report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to health and to set benchmarks and timelines to ensure that indigenous peoples’ right to health is progressively realized, as required by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the Millennium Development Goals.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, university research centres and relevant United Nations agencies conduct further studies on the impacts of climate change and climate change responses on indigenous peoples who are living in highly fragile ecosystems, such as low-lying coastal areas and small island States; semi-arid and arid lands and dry and sub-humid lands (grasslands); tropical and subtropical forests; and high mountain areas.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the report of the international expert group meeting on indigenous languages, held in New York from 8 to 10 January 2008, and recommends that States and United Nations agencies engage with indigenous peoples to develop strategies to implement the recommendations of the report.
The Permanent Forum recommends that United Nations agencies and actors coordinate in the development and implementation of an international research project on the sexual and reproductive health of indigenous peoples, ensuring an active partnership with indigenous peoples and organizations in all stages of the project.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States implement emission reductions to limit the increase in average global temperature to no more than 1.5oC to avoid the increased impact of climate change.
During the pandemic, indigenous peoples have been seriously affected by a lack of access to energy, health-care establishments, education centres, infrastructure that supplies clean water, and communication services and information technologies. Governments have made a range of efforts to support economic activity in their responses to the economic impacts of the pandemic. The relaxation of environmental and human rights standards in order to support activities that will promote economic growth, such as logging, mining, large-scale agriculture and various infrastructure and energy projects, threaten indigenous peoples’ territories. The Permanent Forum requests Member States to include indigenous peoples in the preparatory process and the outcome of the high-level dialogue on energy to be held by the General Assembly in September 2021, in order to accelerate action on achieving Goal 7 and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States immediately begin the process of demarcation of indigenous peoples’ lands and territories in accordance with customary laws and the norms reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with a view to further protecting indigenous peoples’ lands and resources from expropriation, exploitation and designation as conservation areas or national parks without the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples, as set out in articles 19, 26 and 27 of the Declaration.
Affirmation of the status of indigenous peoples as “peoples” is important in fully respecting and protecting their human rights. Consistent with its 2010 report (E/2010/43-E/C.19/2010/15), the Permanent Forum calls upon the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and especially including the Nagoya Protocol, to adopt the terminology “indigenous peoples and local communities” as an accurate reflection of the distinct identities developed by those entities since the adoption of the Convention almost 20 years ago
The Permanent Forum, bearing in mind the contributions of indigenous peoples’ traditional medicines to the recovery from the pandemic, invites the World Health Assembly to declare an international year of indigenous peoples’ traditional medicines by 2025.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and States parties thereto to develop mechanisms to promote the participation of indigenous peoples in all aspects of the international dialogue on climate change.