United Nations agencies should provide incentives and funding opportunities for indigenous youth organizations to initiate non-formal education activities targeting girls and women. Where initiatives already exist, they should develop replication strategies and scale up existing initiatives
Celebrating 22 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the first legally binding international instrument affirming human rights for all children, the Permanent Forum welcomes the adoption of the third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure, enabling individual claims and the use of the examination process, and urges States to accede to this important instrument regarding children in the most vulnerable situations, many of whom are indigenous, to allow them access to recourse and redress.
The Permanent Forum further urges the General Assembly to proclaim an international year of the world’s indigenous children and youth.
The Permanent Forum also calls upon Member States to adopt effective measures to create a sustainable language environment by using information technologies and educational systems and by documenting and monitoring indigenous/native languages and using these languages in public spheres.
The Permanent Forum calls upon UNESCO, in its coordination of the International Decade, to give attention to the role of indigenous languages in the preservation of traditional food and knowledge systems that are important to climate change adaptation strategies.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the recognition by UNICEF of the valuable contributions indigenous children and youth can make in their local communities to ensure the sustainability of climate change adaptation and mitigation plans. The Forum urges the Fund to continue to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on indigenous children and youth, and requests that it ensure the effective participation of indigenous children and youth in the discussions on and solutions to environmental issues in accordance with article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Forum, taking into account the large number of incarcerated indigenous children and youth and the need to assist them in reintegrating into society as soon as possible through socio-educational measures, recommends that the Economic and Social Council urge Governments to ensure greater protection and humane treatment of those children and youth while in prison and youth detention centres, and to provide them with socio-educational measures for their rehabilitation.
The Forum invites the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, within the purview of his mandate, to pay special attention to and make recommendations concerning the rights of indigenous children.
The Permanent Forum notes that indigenous youth in the region are often forced to leave their home and lands to receive an education, which can pose an obstacle to the right to education. The Permanent Forum urges States in Central and Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia to take measures to ensure the enjoyment of the right to education by indigenous youth. The Permanent Forum encourages States of the region to facilitate the development of indigenous peoples’ self-administration, the development of their inner potential and human resources, forming parliaments following the example of the Sami people; and decent representation of the small-numbered indigenous peoples in the bodies of legislative and executive power on all levels.
The Permanent Forum encourages UNFPA to organize, in full cooperation with indigenous peoples, a global symposium on indigenous young people and women during the summit to be held Nairobi in November 2019 to advance the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development so that their key concerns are incorporated into the review and appraisal of the Programme of Action
The Permanent Forum urges Member States, international organizations and the United Nations system to support, financially and by other means, the strengthening of the Ibero-American Institute of Indigenous Languages, which aims to guarantee the exercise of the cultural and linguistic rights recognized in, inter alia, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labour Organization (ILO) Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No.169).
Member States must urgently address violence against indigenous peoples, including State violence, gender-based violence, forced assimilation and forced child removals, discrimination in the justice system and other forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on gender, religion, disability, age and LGBTIQ identity. The Forum encourages the Expert Mechanism, at its earliest convenience, to engage with the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, and with the participation of indigenous peoples, regarding the removal of indigenous children.