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Addressee: Member states
Paragraph Number: 21
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
With few commendable exceptions, indigenous peoples have been neglected in large part in the contingency measures of government authorities in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. As a result, their needs and requirements are not taken adequately into account or addressed by national programmes and policies. The Permanent Forum agrees with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples that effective responses to the pandemic and recovery measures need to be a collaborative effort between indigenous institutions and State institutions. Combining indigenous knowledge of what is best for indigenous communities with State services and financial support will ensure effective outcomes.
Area of Work: Health
Paragraph Number: 29
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
Given increased violence against indigenous peoples in the Amazon region, the Permanent Forum urges the Member States of the region to take urgent, extraordinary and coordinated measures to protect the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, with the aim of maintaining their ownership and use of their territories. The Forum also calls upon the United Nations system and specialized agencies, including OHCHR, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and ILO, to support Member States in the protection of indigenous peoples’ habitats and cultures in the Amazon region in cooperation with indigenous peoples.
Area of Work: Human rights, Environment, Health, Culture
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
Paragraph Number: 96
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recognizes the need to address the emergence of the mental health consequences of the pandemic. The consequences are being felt in all populations, but most acutely in populations that have traditionally been marginalized. The Forum calls for investments and preparations for mental and behavioural health interventions that are culturally adapted. Traditional medicines and practices can play a key role in the health of indigenous communities and individuals by encompassing a variety of dimensions, including the spiritual. The Forum calls on WHO, PAHO, States Members of the United Nations and indigenous peoples to work together to provide pathways for promoting mental health.
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
Addressee: Member States
Paragraph Number: 9
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum is concerned by the killings, violence and harassment targeted at indigenous human rights defenders, which are also frequently committed with impunity. The Permanent Forum is concerned that, despite international condemnation, these criminal acts of violence persist, especially in a small number of countries in South and Central America, Africa and Asia.
Area of Work: Health, Human Rights
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: 90
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum welcomes efforts by Member States to organize specific vaccine programmes for indigenous peoples and encourages the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Gavi Alliance, WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund, in their administration of the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, to ensure that indigenous peoples are uniquely included in vaccine dissemination efforts. Given the disproportionate effect of the COVID-19 virus on the mortality of indigenous peoples in many countries, the Forum underlines the urgency of ensuring that all indigenous peoples are uniquely considered in vaccine planning and distribution. Due attention should also be given to indigenous peoples affected by conflict and post-conflict situations and complex humanitarian emergencies.
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
Addressee: Governments
Paragraph Number: 91
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recognizes that, owing to historical and ongoing discriminatory practices in the delivery of healthcare, including in the administration of vaccines, there is distrust that needs to be acknowledged and addressed by governments. Therefore, the Forum recommends that governments collaborate with indigenous peoples’ representatives and leaders, provide culturally appropriate information in indigenous peoples’ languages, engage with indigenous healthcare practitioners and support indigenous peoples’ organizations that are already providing pandemic-related support in their communities.
Area of Work: Health, Education
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: 67
Session: 20 (2021)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum urgently recommends that the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization (WHO), in cooperation with the Permanent Forum and other relevant entities, create a permanent working group to evaluate the ongoing situation of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact, and to design, promote and discuss with Governments and other institutions the implementation of urgent measures for the protection of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact.
Area of Work: Health
