The Permanent Forum, reaffirming the recommendations on health made at its first, second and third sessions, further recommends that all relevant United Nations entities, especially WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments, fully incorporate a cultural perspective into health policies, programmes and reproductive health services aimed at providing indigenous women with quality health care, including emergency obstetric care, voluntary family planning and skilled attendance at birth. In the latter context, the roles of traditional midwives should be re-evaluated and expanded so that they may assist indigenous women during their reproductive health processes and act as cultural brokers between health systems and the indigenous communities’ values and world views
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the progress made on its recommendation to FAO and WHO to revise the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management to include Indigenous Peoples’ views. The Permanent Forum urges FAO and WHO to develop guidance notes on the risk of pesticide use in Indigenous Peoples’ territories, in consultation with Indigenous Peoples.
The Forum invites UNDP and the Statistical Branch of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs to present a report at the 2004 session of the Forum, setting forth the progress made to date on the Millennium Development Goals, with special focus on alleviating poverty and its affects on indigenous peoples and communities.
The Forum recommends that the Global Fund review their funding strategy in order to include access by indigenous non-governmental organizations and health providers for community-based culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS programmes.
Noting the widespread malnutrition among indigenous peoples, the Permanent Forum urges the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to ensure that all interventions by those organizations aimed at reducing this problem in indigenous communities are based on assessments of the structural causes of the problem, including access to land and availability of natural resources. Moreover, methods of interventions should be sensitive to the social fabric and respectful of indigenous peoples’ models of development.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction take the lead, in collaboration with OHCHR, UNFPA and WHO, in conducting an initial study on the global scope of past forced sterilization programmes of indigenous peoples and determine whether such programmes continue to exist, and report to the Forum at its nineteenth session on the progress made.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Inter-Agency Support Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues, sponsor an expert group meeting on HIV/AIDS by 2019, which would include the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, to analyse the sociocultural and economic determinants of health for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in indigenous communities, with the Forum’s collaboration, in order to ensure the realization of target 3.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Forum reiterates the recommendations contained in its report on its second session and strongly advises positive consideration to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and UNAIDS joining the Inter-Agency Support Group
The Permanent Forum also recommends that WHO and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) engage in an intersessional round table on the pandemic with Forum members to ensure that ongoing mitigation planning and efforts are uniquely adapted to the needs of indigenous peoples, including by applying intercultural approaches to health, such as those applied by PAHO in the Americas.
The Permanent Forum calls for the implementation on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives clear guidance to States on the need for them to minimize childhood exposure to toxic chemicals through water, food, air and other sources of exposure. It is critical that environmental regulators be educated specifically regarding article 24 of the Convention.
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.
The Permanent Forum reiterates the recommendation contained in paragraph 47 of its report on its seventeenth session and calls upon Member States to begin work on a global, legally binding regime for toxic industrial chemicals and hazardous pesticides under the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.