The Permanent Forum welcomes the participation at its sixth session of indigenous parliamentarians from, inter alia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Greenland, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and encourages indigenous parliamentarians to continue participating at future sessions in their own capacity, with designated seating arrangements.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Saramaka People vs. Suriname (28 November 2007), which aptly applies the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Permanent Forum urges the Working Group of the Organization of American States, which is elaborating the draft American declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, to consider the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the minimum standard.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the Fund’s country strategic opportunities programmes as an important instrument for actively focusing on indigenous issues at the national level. The Permanent Forum recommends that IFAD construct mechanisms to secure the complementary use of the national operative planning instruments and the new institutional policy on engaging with indigenous peoples. The alignment of those instruments with the future institutional policy on indigenous issues is important for the mainstreaming of indigenous peoples’ issues within IFAD.