Calling attention to the high rates of suicide among indigenous youth in some countries, the Permanent Forum reiterates its call for States and relevant national aboriginal health bodies to convene a meeting to assess the root causes of indigenous youth suicide and to formulate preventive strategies. The Forum reiterates its call on UNICEF and WHO to convene a meeting on youth suicide.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the United Nations Children’s Fund and other relevant United Nations entities collaborate with indigenous organizations in all regions to develop comprehensive guidelines, including best practices for culturally safe sex education by and for indigenous peoples. That type of comprehensive education may serve as an effective violence-prevention means.
The Permanent Forum urges States and bodies and organizations of the United Nations system, including the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Environment Assembly, to include indigenous peoples in a fully meaningful and effective manner in decision-making processes in all areas aimed at tackling marine litter and plastic pollution, and landscape/ecosystem degradation, including in programmes and partnerships and in the future negotiations of international instruments. Such efforts should include recognition of the traditional knowledge, practices and innovations of indigenous peoples, in particular indigenous women, in plans and actions to restore landscapes and ecosystems and to address marine litter and plastic pollution.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should serve as a key and binding framework in the formulation of plans for development and should be considered fundamental in all processes related to climate change at the local, national, regional and global levels. The safeguard policies of the multilateral banks and the existing and future policies on indigenous peoples of United Nations bodies and other multilateral bodies should be implemented in all climate change-related projects and programmes.
The Forum urges the Global Alliance For Vaccination Initiatives (GAVI) to sponsor a workshop and also urges UNDP to co-sponsor a workshop to expand global programmes for immunization and vaccination of indigenous women and children and to assess the need for safety protocols relating thereto. The Permanent Forum recommends that its focal point in health and a representative of the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus on Health be invited to attend and be provided the means to participate.
States should recognize indigenous peoples’ rights to forests and should review and amend laws that are not consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international standards on indigenous peoples’ land and natural resource rights, including over forests. This includes indigenous peoples’ customary law on land and resource rights and the right to be fully involved in decision-making processes.
The Permanent Forum urges all States to substantially increase the human and financial resources made available to all indigenous communities and schools to prevent self-harm and suicide among young people, and for holistic treatment based on cultural, spiritual and linguistic revitalization, providing healthy and positive lifestyle choices and access to traditional methods of counselling based on accurate and reliable data.
In support of their country-level programming, and with a view to a deeper appreciation of indigenous peoples’ perceptions of such interventions, UNICEF and UNFPA should undertake a study on the social, cultural, legal and spiritual institutions of indigenous peoples and how these affect the rights of women and children as laid out in local, regional and global frameworks.
In order to promote further knowledge of the Forum and the role of the United Nations among indigenous children and youth, the Forum decides to organize an indigenous youth art competition for the design of a logo for the Forum and to present the results to the Forum at its fourth session, in 2005, with the highest participation of indigenous children, including illiterate children.