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Addressee: UNPFII
Paragraph Number: 4
Session: 2 (2003)
Full Text:
As stated in its report on its first session, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues decided to make indigenous children and youth a focal point of its work in the years to come. The Forum reconfirms its commitment to do so, and acknowledges the efforts made by organizations representing indigenous peoples, United Nations agencies and States in the past year to tackle the urgent needs of the young generation, including the decision of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to declare indigenous children as the subject for its theme day, to be held in September 2003.
Area of Work: Indigenous Children and Youth
Addressee: Member States
Paragraph Number: 4
Session: 11 (2012)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recalls the fourth preambular paragraph of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which affirms that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust. Legal and political justification for the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands, their disenfranchisement and the abrogation of their rights such as the doctrine of discovery, the doctrine of domination, “conquest”, “discovery”, terra nullius or the Regalian doctrine were adopted by colonizers throughout the world. While these nefarious doctrines were promoted as the authority for the acquisition of the lands and territories of indigenous peoples, there were broader assumptions implicit in the doctrines, which became the basis for the assertion of authority and control over the lives of indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. Indigenous peoples were constructed as “savages”, “barbarians”, “backward” and “inferior and uncivilized” by the colonizers who used such constructs to subjugate, dominate and exploit indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. The Permanent Forum calls upon States to repudiate such doctrines as the basis for denying indigenous peoples’ human rights.
Area of Work: Human rights
