The global engagement of indigenous peoples at the international level has led to some positive institutional developments, including the establishment of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples can play an important role in the fight against climate change. Member States and United Nations entities should ensure that any activities related to the use of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples respect indigenous peoples’ own protocols and consent agreements for managing access to their traditional knowledge. Strengthening and ensuring the full participation of indigenous peoples at all levels is also critical for the design and implementation of climate policies, plans, programmes and projects at the local, national and global levels.
The Permanent Forum commends the establishment and achievements of the Regional Indigenous Peoples’ Programme of UNDP in Asia, and calls on UNDP to ensure that the funding of that programme will be increased and that similar programmes will be set up in other regions.
The Permanent Forum invites the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights
Council on the situation of human rights defenders to prepare a study on the drivers
of attacks against indigenous human rights defenders in business contexts and invites
the Special Rapporteur to share information on progress with the Permanent Forum
at its twenty-second session, to be held in 2023.
The Forum takes note with satisfaction of the enhanced contributions of the United Nations system in its work, and recommends that the United Nations system, Governments, indigenous and other organizations further assist in the implementation and monitoring of the Forum’s recommendations and report to the Forum at its annual sessions. The Forum notes with appreciation the database of recommendations and their implementation status, as well as indicative time frames prepared by its secretariat, and recommends that the secretariat further develop this as a useful tool.
In the light of the emerging international legal framework for local communities, the Permanent Forum recommends that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) prepare, in consultation with other relevant United Nations entities, including the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and before 2022, a comparative legal study that analyses the rights of indigenous peoples and the emerging rights of local communities.
The Permanent Forum is concerned that, in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Member States are not complying with the Declaration. In one case, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination requested that Norway temporarily suspend the ongoing construction of the Fosen Vind onshore wind power project, which negatively affects the reindeer herding of the South Sami people. The Government of Norway, having concluded that its administrative and legal processes were sufficient, did not implement the interim measures. The Forum urges Member States to respect and comply with decisions made by the United Nations treaty bodies.
The Permanent Forum highlights the activities of those States that have undertaken or are currently undertaking constitutional revision processes to strengthen constitutional provisions on human rights, pluriculturalism and juridical pluralism, among others, and also welcomes those States that are in the midst of ongoing constitutional revision or reform processes. The Forum calls upon all relevant States to review and revise their constitutions and legal frameworks to comprehensively recognize the human rights of indigenous peoples. The Forum recommends that the process of constitutional revision in Member States should be driven by indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum appoints Irma Pineda Santiago and Símon Freddy Condo Riveros, members of the Forum, to conduct a study on collective intellectual property and the appropriation of the ideas and creations of indigenous peoples, and to present that study to the Forum at its twenty-first session.