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Addressee: UN agencies

Paragraph Number: 36
Session: 11 (2012)
Full Text:

The Permanent Forum reiterates the call, made at its tenth session, to 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. Furthermore, the Forum recommends the use of social media, youth forums 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.

Area of Work: Human rights, Indigenous Children and Youth

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