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Addressee: Member States, Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people
Paragraph Number: 95
Session: 6 (2007)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum recommends that relevant States with indigenous peoples invite the Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples to undertake country visits. The Special Rapporteur should give priority to invitations from those countries where indigenous peoples have expressed concerns about their capacity to fully enjoy and freely exercise their human rights.
Area of Work: Human rights
Addressee: OHCHR
Paragraph Number: 95
Session: 10 (2011)
Full Text:
The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues welcomes the proposal made by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the report on its third session, which encourages OHCHR to hold an international expert seminar on truth and reconciliation processes. This proposal of the Expert Mechanism recognizes the importance of national truth and reconciliation processes for improving relations between States and indigenous peoples and for facilitating strengthened recognition and implementation of the rights of indigenous peoples.
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
