The Permanent Forum encourages APG to continue to give priority to its endeavours to eliminate the servitude and contemporary forms of slavery to which families and communities in Santa Cruz, especially in Alto Parapetí, and in Chuquisaca, are subjected. The Permanent Forum encourages APG, as the organization that represents the Guaraní people in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, to continue to give priority to combating these extremely serious human rights violations as part of its broader programme of reconstitution of the Guaraní people.
The Permanent Forum expresses its appreciation to the Member States that have already submitted information to it over the years, and encourages all States to submit substantive information on measures taken to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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 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.
Considering the continued threats facing indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact, and given their unique vulnerability in the time of the pandemic, the Permanent Forum recommends that local populations in the territories and adjacent areas of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact be prioritized in COVID-19 vaccination plans. The Forum reminds States that, by virtue of their international obligations, and specifically those contained in the American Convention on Human Rights, they must adopt measures to safeguard the life and integrity of their citizens, especially when it comes to highly vulnerable population groups, as in the case of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation and initial contact.
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.