The Permanent Forum was presented with horrific testimonies of Indigenous children incarcerated in prisons and other holding facilities. The Permanent Forum reminds Member States to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child in relation to the arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child. No child should be in prison. In that regard, the Permanent Forum notes the finding in 2022 of the Supreme Court of Western Australia that the extensive solitary confinement and significant reduction in liberty of children, primarily Aboriginal children, was unlawful. The Permanent Forum calls upon Australia to respect the Court decision and remove its reservation to article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States review and reform their child protection policies and systems to prevent undue removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities.
The Forum invites the World Health Organization, as lead agency on Millennium Development Goals 4, 5, and 6 with UNDP, the World Intellectual Property Organization and other relevant agencies and States, to partner with the Forum to organize, host and report to the Forum at its next session on methods, processes and best practices of integrating indigenous traditional knowledge, medicine, healing and other health practices in mainstream health-care systems and sensitizing health personnel concerning the protection of indigenous knowledge systems
The Forum on Indigenous Issues is deeply concerned that particular problems and discrimination are faced by indigenous children and youth, including in the areas of education, health, culture, extreme poverty, mortality, sexual exploitation, militarization, displacement, incarceration, labour and others
The Forum welcomes the participation of the Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in the high-level panel and dialogue on indigenous children and youth held during its second session, and expresses the hope that that will lead to enhanced monitoring and promotion of the rights of indigenous children at the national and international levels. The Forum recommends that the Chairman of the Committee inform the next meeting of the Chairpersons of the human rights treaty bodies of the results of the high-level panel and dialogue. The Forum recommends that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights transmit the results of the discussion of the Committee to the Forum at its third session.
The United Nations Children's Fund should initiate country-specific situation analyses of indigenous youth and children through field offices in countries with indigenous communities and transmit such situation analyses to the Forum
Affirmation of the status of indigenous peoples as “peoples” is important in fully respecting and protecting their human rights. Consistent with its 2010 report (E/2010/43-E/C.19/2010/15), the Permanent Forum calls upon the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and especially including the Nagoya Protocol, 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
Calling attention to the high rates of suicide among indigenous youth in some countries, the Permanent Forum reiterates its call for States and relevant national aboriginal health bodies to convene a meeting to assess the root causes of indigenous youth suicide and to formulate preventive strategies. The Forum reiterates its call on UNICEF and WHO to convene a meeting on youth suicide.
The Forum recommends that both States and indigenous peoples’ organizations consider the inclusion of youth representatives in their delegations attending the annual session of the Forum.
The Permanent Forum requests that UNICEF coordinate its activities and operations with the United Nations Programme on Youth, the secretariat of the Forum and the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus to ensure the participation of indigenous youth in the upcoming high-level meeting on youth.
The Millennium Campaign should raise awareness about the Millennium Development Goals and indigenous peoples, providing space for indigenous youth to express their views and share experiences related to Millennium Development Goals issues, enable young indigenous people to interact with their national leaders, and facilitate networking between youth groups to crystallise new projects. The campaigns should include several elements including school-based outreach, national conferences, local workshops, media activities, including phone-in radio programs and televised debates, essay and expression contests and service days
The Permanent Forum welcomes the study to examine challenges in the African region to protecting traditional knowledge, genetic resources and folklore prepared by Paul Kanyinke Sena (E/C.19/2014/2), acknowledges the support provided by the WIPO secretariat towards the completion of that study and, in this regard, calls upon the WIPO secretariat to extend its outreach and awareness-raising activities in respect of indigenous peoples, with a particular focus on African indigenous peoples so as to increase their awareness of WIPO processes, and to further develop culturally appropriate training and capacity-building materials for indigenous peoples consistent with article 41 of the Declaration.