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 Forum, taking into account that indigenous children, youth and women are more vulnerable and are often physically and psychologically mistreated, and that children represent the future of indigenous peoples, recommends that the Council support the declaration of an international day or an international year of the indigenous child, to be celebrated with awareness-raising activities to honour the cultural identity of indigenous peoples.
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.