The Permanent Forum requests that UNICEF, when completing its strategic policy framework on indigenous peoples, include indigenous youth in the design of the policy. In addition, particular attention is needed to reflect the diversity among indigenous children and to focus on vulnerable groups, such as victims of human trafficking and child pornography, as well as groups facing manifold discrimination based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Children’s Fund develop and adopt a comprehensive and distinct policy on indigenous children and young people, taking into account the human rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration and in consultation and collaboration with indigenous peoples and indigenous children and youth organizations in particular.
The Forum recommends that the United Nations system, in particular UNICEF and WHO, in collaboration with Governments and in consultation with indigenous peoples’ organizations, and with the participation and input from the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, address issues related to the trafficking and sexual exploitation of indigenous girls, and urges States to create programmes of rehabilitation.
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.
Furthermore, States should strengthen measures, systems and resources to effectively address all forms of violence against indigenous women, such as female genital mutilation; child marriage; sexual abuse; forced labour; modern slavery; domestic, institutional and political violence, including in the context of forced displacement; sexual exploitation; trafficking; armed conflict; and the militarization of indigenous lands and territories.