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Addressee: World Health Organisation (WHO)
Paragraph Number: 90
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum urges WHO to attend its sessions, and encourages WHO to submit a report to it at its fourth session, responding to recommendations made by the Forum at its first to third sessions. The Forum regrets that WHO was unable to respond to its recommendations made at its second session, in particular those contained in chapter I, section B, paragraphs 16, 63-64, 68, 74, 79 and 82.
Area of Work: Health
Addressee: Member States
Paragraph Number: 94
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum requests Governments to prepare reports on their experience and case studies as to how they are addressing indigenous people’s health and the Millennium Development Goals, and to submit their reports to the Forum at its fourth session.
Area of Work: Health
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: World Health Organisation (WHO)
Paragraph Number: 93
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum requests the United Nations Development Group, which includes WHO, to make a report on how it is addressing the Millennium Development Goals, with particular focus on indigenous peoples. The report should identify obstacles and constraints at the state, regional, and global levels, and should make recommendations to address these obstacles. The report should be presented to the Forum at its fourth session.
Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 86
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum reiterates its health recommendations made at its first and second sessions, in particular those contained in chapter I, section B, paragraphs 63 to 82 of its report on its second session.2
Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 92
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum recommends that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in conjunction with the Forum, convene an international workshop, with the participation of United Nations agencies and indigenous experts, on indigenous peoples and the human rights to health and culturally appropriate health care.
Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 20
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum recommends that the United Nations system consider the following recommendations:
(a) The United Nations system should fully explore the protection, use and promotion of indigenous (including traditional) knowledge and ensure synergies across the relevant bodies currently investigating the issues (specifically the World Intellectual Property Organization, UNESCO, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Health Organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and others) and furthermore should invite the Forum to participate;
(b) UNESCO should continue to investigate indigenous pedagogy and its application to indigenous education in collaboration with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples and the Forum and other relevant bodies. The study should include the use of such strategies as boarding schools and both their negative and positive effects. To assist with this investigation into indigenous education, UNESCO is urged to facilitate regional conferences and a global forum on indigenous education to identify both barriers to educational equity and good practice;
(c) The Forum calls upon Governments and UNESCO to give more attention (by increasing their budgets) to developing quality indigenous education policies (with the participation of indigenous peoples) to achieve the Dakar objectives. “Education for all” is one of the fundamental objectives of the World Education Forum that should be achieved by 2015;
(d) The Forum encourages the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNESCO and other agencies to continue to support, in cooperation with indigenous peoples, intercultural and bilingual education programmes and to promote in particular the right of education for girls;
(e) The Forum should work with UNITAR to coordinate training for indigenous peoples within the United Nations system;
(f) UNESCO is requested to facilitate a world indigenous education conference, with appropriate United Nations partners (the Forum, UNESCO, UNITAR etc.), Member States and indigenous peoples. Furthermore, UNESCO should invite indigenous peoples and the Forum to participate in United Nations activities in the field of education. UNESCO has recently completed and distributed a publication on best practices for indigenous peoples education and this should be promoted throughout the international community;
(g) UNICEF advocates bilingual and cross-cultural education for indigenous peoples and conducts schools for girls and women’s literacy programmes in Latin America, and this initiative should be further encouraged and expanded;
(h) The Forum recommends that relevant agencies and Governments, on a regional basis, should provide technical services and the political and moral support needed for the creation, recognition and functioning of future international indigenous universities;
(i) Taking into account the importance of UNESCO national commissions, the Forum recommends that the Economic and Social Council and Governments facilitate the participation of indigenous peoples in the regional commissions with the incorporation of indigenous representation;
(j) The Forum, to underscore the crucial role of language skills to sustainable development and in celebration of the United Nations Year on Education for Sustainable Development (2005), recommends that the secretariat of the Forum, together with the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF and UNESCO, explore the possibility of organizing a regional workshop in Asia or Africa on the theme “Indigenous children and language education”, to discuss policies, programmes and practical experiences with bilingual education to strengthen additive learning through the use of mother tongue and the “indigenization” of curricula in formal schooling, among members of the Forum, United Nations agencies, Governments (especially departments of education), indigenous and tribal representatives and indigenous education experts.
Area of Work: Education, Traditional Knowledge
Addressee: World Health Organisation (WHO)
Paragraph Number: 91
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The Forum recommends that the Special Rapporteur on the right to health examine the disparity of health standards for indigenous peoples in developed countries in the light of the fact that United Nations agencies and specialized entities, including WHO, do not undertake health programmes in developed countries.
Area of Work: Health
