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Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 30
Session: 11 (2012)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum urges States to provide detailed reports to the Forum on the implementation of the Declaration. It recommends public education initiatives and the sharing of best practices in respect of the Declaration, in particular through training programmes for government agencies, the judiciary and law enforcement officials, in collaboration with indigenous peoples. Furthermore, the Forum recommends that such reports be included in the periodic reports mandated under human rights treaties and the universal periodic review procedures.

Area of Work: Human rights

Addressee: Member States

Paragraph Number: 4
Session: 11 (2012)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum recalls the fourth preambular paragraph of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which affirms that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust. Legal and political justification for the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands, their disenfranchisement and the abrogation of their rights such as the doctrine of discovery, the doctrine of domination, “conquest”, “discovery”, terra nullius or the Regalian doctrine were adopted by colonizers throughout the world. While these nefarious doctrines were promoted as the authority for the acquisition of the lands and territories of indigenous peoples, there were broader assumptions implicit in the doctrines, which became the basis for the assertion of authority and control over the lives of indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. Indigenous peoples were constructed as “savages”, “barbarians”, “backward” and “inferior and uncivilized” by the colonizers who used such constructs to subjugate, dominate and exploit indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. The Permanent Forum calls upon States to repudiate such doctrines as the basis for denying indigenous peoples’ human rights.

Area of Work: Human rights