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Addressee: Inter-Agency Support Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues (IASG), Relevant United Nations bodies and agencies
Full Text
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Inter-agency Support Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues convene an international technical expert seminar on indicators of the well-being of indigenous peoples to discuss indicators that could be used in monitoring the situation of indigenous peoples and the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, the Forum recommends that relevant United Nations bodies and agencies, States and indigenous peoples conduct assessments of the extent to which they have advanced the recommendations of the Forum on indigenous women, utilizing the framework of the Declaration, as set out by the International Indigenous Women’s Forum. Action for the immediate implementation of these recommendations is required by all.
Responses
The Technical Workshop is due to take place in July 2010.
ILO Reports (2010): This recommendation was discussed on the occasion of the IASG meeting in Nairobi in 2009 and the following meeting organised by the Secretariat of the Covention on Biological Diversity (SCBD) and the working group on indicators of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB).
At the SCBD-IIFB meeting it was decided to recommend measuring status and trends in indigenous peoples’ traditional occupations as a proxy indicator to assess the situation of indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge, in the context of Article 8j of the CBD. Further, the ILO will be asked to explore the operationalisation of this indicator, along with the IIFB.
Also, in the context of the CBD-IIFB meeting, a small sub-group comprised of UNPFII, OHCHR, UNEP and ILO, discussed a possible work plan towards organising the technical expert seminar, recommended by the UNPFII. The group acknowledged the crucial importance of this as well as the need to generate broad discussion and consensus in the process and decided to put forward the following recommendations:
• The international technical expert seminar, recommended by the UNPFII, should be co-organised by the Secretariat of the UNPFII, the OHCHR and the ILO.
• The seminar should take place in Geneva in July 2010, in connection with the next session of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), to ensure broad participation, including by the UN Special Rapporteur, as well as EMRIP and UNPFII members.
• UNPFII, OHCHR, UNEP and the ILO should organise a side-event during the 9th Session of the UNPFII in New York in May 2010, to further gather input for the Expert Meeting.
• The ILO has had a consultant working for some months on an initial outline of ideas for a possible monitoring framework for the Declaration. The ILO should share the work of the consultant as soon as possible and thus initiate a broad-based process of discussion leading to the Expert Seminar in July 2010.
As mentioned in the ILO’s 2008 report to the UNPFII, following a study on Discrimination against Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Employment and Occupation, the Programme to Promote ILO Convention No. 169 (PRO169) and the GENDER Bureau launched a study to document the discrimination faced by indigenous women in employment and occupation. The study is based on a number of country studies from Bangladesh, Nepal and Latin America and is now being finalised. It aims at developing and promoting an intersectional approach to address the situation of indigenous women taking also into account individual and collective aspects to capture the delicate position of women as individual and members of their communities.
Ecuador reports (E/C.19/2010/12/Add.11): With respect to recommendation 33, the Ministry of Coordination for Cultural
and Natural Heritage has provided technical assistance under its Development and Cultural Diversity Programme to Reduce Poverty and Promote Social Inclusion,2 in coordination with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to ensure the incorporation of an intercultural perspective into the national development plan. The plan, entitled “National Plan for Living Well 2009-2013, Building a Plurinational and Intercultural State”,3 is the Government’s main instrument for coordinating public policies with public administration and investment. Achievement of the plan’s 12 national strategies and 12 national goals will consolidate the changes aspired to by the Government and people of Ecuador in order to achieve the goal of living well, (sumak kawsay). Goals seven and eight address the intercultural perspective, a cross-cutting element of the plan.
Finland reports (2010): No statistics are compiled in Finland on grounds of ethnicity, as legislation on personal data protection prohibits the processing of sensitive data relating e.g. to race or ethnic origin.
The central authority responsible for the population registry is the Finnish Population Register Centre, in addition to which local registry offices serve as local authorities. The registration of the data is based on the statutory reports by citizens and authorities. Statistics e.g. on nationality, birth country and language are collected on the basis of information from the Population Register. Yearly statistics and information are available classified on the basis of nationality, birth country and language at http://www.tilastokeskus.fi/index_en.html.
The underlying principle of the registration of languages is that each person has only one language of his or her choice. Thus, the language of each person is defined in accordance with a personal declaration. It is possible to later change the information included in the population information system. According to Section 7 of the Sami Language Act, a Sámi who is resident in Finland in accordance with the Municipality of Residence Act (201/1994) has the right to declare Sámi as his or her mother tongue for the purposes of the Population Register.
Final Report of UNPFII Session 8 (2009)
Area of Work
