The Permanent Forum encourages FAO to continue supporting indigenous peoples’ organizations in the field of communication for development. In particular, the Permanent Forum recommends that FAO continue to provide support for indigenous peoples’ communication platforms and their activities in the field of participatory territorial development and community-based adaptation to climate change. The Permanent Forum recommends that other United Nations agencies and donors join FAO in that important task and strengthen the reporting and monitoring mechanisms about indigenous peoples’ right to communication as a condition towards free and informed prior consent and self-determined development.
The Permanent Forum is alarmed by the continuing acts of violence being perpetrated against indigenous peoples by Member States and others. The Forum therefore acknowledges the need for States to establish a monitoring mechanism to address violence against indigenous peoples, including assassinations, assassination attempts and rapes, and intimidation of indigenous peoples in their attempts to safeguard and use their homelands and territories that transcend national borders, including the non recognition of their membership identification and documents and the criminalization of their related activities. Specific attention must be paid to such actions being perpetrated by State and local police, the military, law enforcement institutions, the judiciary and other State-controlled institutions against indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum affirms that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will be its legal framework. The Permanent Forum will therefore ensure that the Declaration is integrated in its own recommendations on the seven substantive mandated areas — economic and social development, environment, health, education, culture, human rights and the implementation of the Declaration — as well as in the Forum’s work under the special theme for each session and in its ongoing themes and priorities.
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States in the region enhance the protection of Indigenous Peoples through recognition and autonomy, in line with the Declaration, by revising legal and policy frameworks. Governments should rectify the injustices of the colonial past, taking into consideration Indigenous Peoples and their perspectives, in particular those of Indigenous youth, ensuring the participation of Indigenous Peoples in decision-making.
The Permanent Forum urges States to promote and protect the rights of indigenous women and men working as journalists, communicators and as human rights defenders in accordance with international human rights law, in particular in accordance with article 16 of the Declaration, which calls for the full freedom of expression of indigenous peoples.
States should take effective measures to eliminate violence against indigenous peoples by studying the root causes of conflict and human rights abuses, developing indicators and methodologies for risk assessment and early warning mechanisms and improving national legislation for the administration of justice with regard to the perpetrators of war crimes.
The Permanent Forum decides to appoint as Special Rapporteur Ms Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a member of the Forum to conduct a preliminary study on the impact of the international legal construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery on Indigenous Peoples that has served as the foundation of the violation of their human rights and to report thereon to the Forum at its ninth session, in 2010.
Many States have established mechanisms to protect human rights. However, the Permanent Forum is concerned that such mechanisms might prioritize individual rights over collective rights. It calls upon States, in cooperation with national human rights institutions, to comply with their commitments made in the outcome document of the 2014 World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, with the aim of achieving the full enforcement of the collective rights of indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum reiterates the call, made at its fifth and eleventh sessions, upon United Nations agencies and funds to conduct and support regional and international human rights training programmes aimed at building the capacity and advocacy skills of indigenous youth. The Forum further recommends the use of youth forums, social media and other popular cultural forms of communication to disseminate information and training material on the rights of indigenous youth and to facilitate consultation processes at the national and international levels.
The Forum recommends that the United Nations and Member States recognize the cultural rights of indigenous peoples which include the rights to organize oneself freely and to administer one’s own cultural, sports, social and religious institutions. For this purpose, the Forum encourages the United Nations and the relevant specialized agencies to consider establishing an international centre for multicultural and multiracial studies.
The Permanent Forum invites the Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples to examine and report on the situation of the human rights of indigenous peoples in Non-Self-Governing Territories of the Pacific region, and urges relevant States to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur for that purpose.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Organization of American States establish a consultation mechanism, composed of experts from indigenous peoples, as part of the effort to ensure national implementation of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169).