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Paragraph Number: 89
Session: 8 (2009)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recognizes the cultural significance and medical importance of the coca leaf in the Andean and other indigenous regions of South America. It also notes that coca leaf chewing is specifically banned by the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961). The Permanent Forum recommends that those portions of the Convention regarding coca leaf chewing that are inconsistent with the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain their traditional health and cultural practices, as recognized in articles 11, 24 and 31 of the Declaration, be amended and/or repealed.
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: Inter-Agency Support Group (IASG)
Paragraph Number: 7
Session: 2 (2003)
Full Text:
The Forum recommends that the Inter-Agency Support Group discuss how to promote the cross-cutting issue of children and youth.
Area of Work: Indigenous Children and Youth
Addressee: UNDP, UNFPA, WHO
Paragraph Number: 7
Session: 5 (2006)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recommends that States, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other relevant organizations adopt targeted policies, programmes, projects and budgets designed to address the staggering prevalence of diabetes among indigenous peoples and put in place culturally appropriate health services, health education and awareness-raising initiatives to treat diabetes and prevent its rapid growth. Particular attention should be given to pregnant women, whose reproductive health is closely linked to the future risk of their children developing diabetes.
Area of Work: Health
Addressee: UNFPA, UN country teams, Member States
Paragraph Number: 7
Session: 12 (2013)
Full Text:
In sexual health and reproductive rights there is a need for HIV-sensitive, gender-sensitive and age-sensitive sexual health education that respects cultural sensitivities in pre-testing and post testing conditions and delivery of services. The Permanent Forum recommends:
(a) That, in the design and implementation of its strategic plan for the period 2014-2018, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) take into consideration the rights of indigenous women and young people;
(b) That contributions be made to ministries of health and indigenous women’s organizations to consolidate their work on intercultural standards for
high-quality sexual health and reproductive rights and maternal health and to assess experiences of intercultural health models in other regions of the world in order to identify opportunities for South-South cooperation;
(c) That efforts be made to ensure the integration of indigenous peoples’ rights into national and subnational strategies on gender-based violence and to promote the delivery of culturally acceptable critical services to address gender-based violence and sexual violence, with a focus on adolescents, youth, migrants and indigenous women with disabilities;
(d) That the United Nations country teams contribute to strengthening and integrating the rights of indigenous women and youth into national and subnational development strategies and sectoral plans, particularly but not exclusively in the areas of sexual health and reproductive rights and maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as in adolescent and youth policies and plans;
(e) That contributions be made to supporting work at the country level on the elimination of female genital mutilation/cutting among indigenous girls, including the elimination of other forms of harmful practices, for example early and forced marriage and early unwanted pregnancies;
(f) That efforts be made to promote the rights of indigenous youth at the regional and country levels, including their participation in the International Conference on Population and Development beyond 2014 processes, and, where possible, their participation in UNFPA-led discussions on the post-2015 development agenda.
Area of Work: Health
