The Permanent Forum urges the international community to pay particular attention to the situation of the Batwa peoples, in particular Batwa women, and to support the inclusion of the San people and other indigenous groups in the national census. The Permanent Forum urges African States and their international development partners to review the poverty reduction strategy papers and other frameworks for integrating the specificities of such indigenous peoples as the Batwa, Pygmies, Touaregue, Amazigh, Khoisan and other hunter-gatherers or nomadic peoples in their countries, both in Central and in Southern Africa.
The Permanent Forum calls upon those States which have granted leases, concessions and licences on indigenous peoples’ territories for projects related to logging, minerals, oil, gas and water without proper consultation and without respecting the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned to review those arrangements and to address the complaints raised by indigenous peoples in those territories.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to adopt the terminology “indigenous peoples and local communities” as an accurate reflection of the distinct identities developed by those entities since the adoption of the Convention almost 20 years ago.
The Permanent Forum appreciates the participation and active input of national and regional human rights institutions at its sixteenth session, encourages studies and reports by the national human rights institutions in the promotion and protection of indigenous rights and invites those institutions to present their reports and studies in future sessions.
Adopt measures that ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous women in implementation, follow-up work and monitoring of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals
Indigenous women’s collective rights and the decolonization of State structures are essential to implementing general recommendation No. 39. The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) conduct and present a study by 2025 on the impacts of colonization on the rights of Indigenous women and girls, including within the context of the UN-Women strategy for the inclusion and visibility of Indigenous women, in collaboration with other United Nations entities. The study should identify critical action areas and strategies to advance the implementation of general recommendation No. 39.
The Permanent Forum urges States that have not yet done so to ratify the Convention of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the initiation of a national dialogue to discuss and achieve key constitutional reforms in the field of justice in Guatemala, and encourages the recognition of indigenous justice systems. The Forum urges Guatemala and the private sector, in addition to the World Bank and other international economic institutions, to acknowledge that serious efforts require structural economic and social reforms rather than rapid growth of gross domestic product in order to reverse widespread and growing poverty among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. Such crucial reforms must ensure more equitable distribution and access to traditional lands for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala, consistent with the rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration, and on the basis of respect for and legal recognition of their collective rights, including their self-determined development. Furthermore, the Forum calls upon Guatemala to reinforce the effective and full implementation of the Peace Accords.