Displaying 97 - 108 of 337

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 79
Session: 10 (2011)
Full Text:

Indigenous peoples have a profound relationship with their environment. This includes their distinct rights to water. The Permanent Forum urges States to guarantee those rights, including the right to access to safe, clean, accessible and affordable water for personal, domestic and community use. Water should be treated as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good. The manner in which the right to water is realized must be sustainable for present and future generations. Moreover, indigenous peoples’ access to water resources on their ancestral lands must be protected from encroachment and pollution. Indigenous peoples must have the resources to design, deliver and control their access to water.

Area of Work: Human rights, Environment
Paragraph Number: 78
Session: 22 (2023)
Full Text:

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.

Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 60
Session: 2 (2003)
Full Text:

The Forum recommends that all United Nations environmental bodies, in particular the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNEP, GEF, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, make the necessary efforts to mobilize resources for projects by indigenous peoples, and provide financial support to strengthen the international indigenous peoples Forum on biodiversity and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Area of Work: Environment
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

Addressee: EMRIP, IASG

Paragraph Number: 41
Session: 7 (2008)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum urges the Human Rights Council expert mechanism on indigenous peoples to evaluate whether existing and proposed climate change policies and projects adhere to the standards set by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These bodies, together with the members of the Inter-Agency Support Group for Indigenous Issues, should collaborate with States, multilateral bodies, donors and indigenous peoples to effectively ensure that the implementation of the Declaration is central to the design and implementation of climate change policies and programmes.

Area of Work: Environment

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: 10
Session: 7 (2008)
Full Text:

The principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, equity, social justice and sustainable development and development with identity should remain the key principles underpinning the negotiations, policies and programmes on climate change. The human rights-based approach to development and the ecosystem approach should guide the design and implementation of local, national, regional and global climate policies and projects. The crucial role of indigenous women and indigenous youth in developing mitigation and adaptation measures should also be ensured.

Area of Work: Environment
Paragraph Number: 12
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:

The global engagement of indigenous peoples at the international level has led to some positive institutional developments, including the establishment of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples can play an important role in the fight against climate change. Member States and United Nations entities should ensure that any activities related to the use of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples respect indigenous peoples’ own protocols and consent agreements for managing access to their traditional knowledge. Strengthening and ensuring the full participation of indigenous peoples at all levels is also critical for the design and implementation of climate policies, plans, programmes and projects at the local, national and global levels.

Area of Work: Environment, Culture, Methods of Work

Addressee: PAHO, WHO

Paragraph Number: 45
Session: 18 (2019)
Full Text:

In the context of the implementation of the Policy on Ethnicity and Health, adopted by the executive committee of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 2017 (CE160.R11), the Permanent Forum invites PAHO and the World Health Organization (WHO) to collaborate with health institutions and policymakers to address issues related to indigenous maternal health, including the practice of indigenous midwifery. It recommends that PAHO prepare a study on the advancements in indigenous maternal health, including best practices used by indigenous midwives and supportive organizations. The Forum invites PAHO to submit the report by 2020.

Area of Work: Health, Indigenous Women and Girls
Paragraph Number: 75
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:

The Forum recognizes the unique contributions made by indigenous women in terms of possessing and transmitting through the generations a wealth of traditional knowledge on the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable environmental management, and calls on the secretariat of the Convention for Biological Diversity, UNEP and all relevant United Nations bodies to mainstream indigenous gender issues and knowledge in national environmental policies and programmes.

Area of Work: Environment

Addressee: UNDP

Paragraph Number: 84
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum is concerned about reports of UNDP entering into a strategic partnership with the oil company GeoPark, a private entity that has been accused by indigenous communities of disregarding their rights, to carry out economic development activities in Colombia without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous communities that will be affected. This partnership contradicts standard 6 (indigenous peoples) of the UNDP social and environmental standards, and the Forum urges UNDP to suspend all related partnership activities until a proper free, prior and informed consent process can be carried out.

Area of Work: Methods of Work, Environment

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 36
Session: 16 (2017)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum recommends that States develop laws and policies to ensure the recognition, continued vitality and protection from misappropriation of indigenous traditional knowledge.

Area of Work: Environment