United Nations organizations and States should pay special attention to the specific situation and needs of elderly indigenous women.
Given that the United Nations relies on the cooperation of the people whom it serves and that everyone, individually and in association with others, has the right to unhindered access to and communication with the Organization, the Permanent Forum requests the Secretary-General, through the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights and in consultation with other relevant United Nations mechanisms, to report on trends related to intimidation and reprisals against indigenous peoples who seek to engage with the United Nations, including by providing suggestions to prevent and address reprisals through reporting from all parts of the United Nations system and with input from indigenous peoples, to the Forum at its eighteenth session, in 2019.
To ensure that the concerns and priorities of indigenous women are properly taken into account, the Forum urges States:
a. To take concrete steps to increase the participation of indigenous women in governance and decision-making structures at all levels;
b. To clearly identify and define the issues and needs of indigenous women, taking into account regional and local cultural differences;
c. To develop and strengthen structures and mechanisms for the advancement of indigenous women within the wider agenda for the advancement of women; to clearly define their mandate by taking into account the holistic and cross-cutting nature of indigenous women’s issues; to allocate appropriate resources to those institutions; and to provide support from the national political leadership to those structures;
d. To ensure the implementation of international human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, regarding indigenous women, and to integrate those instruments into the formulation of a coherent national public policy for indigenous women (including legal frameworks, budget allocations and specific programmes and projects addressing indigenous women’s issues);
e. To ensure equal access of indigenous women to decision-making and governmental bodies, political parties, judiciary, trade unions etc.;
f. To lend support to NGOs (both international and national) dealing with issues involving indigenous women;
g. To increase indigenous women’s capacity for decision-making and political participation, and to ensure that adequate numbers of indigenous women are placed in positions of political leadership as well as in governance and public administration.