The Permanent Forum commends the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean for starting a regional initiative building on the Programme’s experience in Asia. The Forum recommends that the initiative be consolidated and that the Regional Bureau implement a regional programme to ensure cross-fertilization of good practices among countries and coherent policy approaches. The Forum encourages the Regional Bureau to strengthen its capacity and, together with the Inter-Agency Support Group, looks forward to supporting those efforts through specialized training workshops for United Nations country teams.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the Fund’s country strategic opportunities programmes as an important instrument for actively focusing on indigenous issues at the national level. The Permanent Forum recommends that IFAD construct mechanisms to secure the complementary use of the national operative planning instruments and the new institutional policy on engaging with indigenous peoples. The alignment of those instruments with the future institutional policy on indigenous issues is important for the mainstreaming of indigenous peoples’ issues within IFAD.
As part of the active engagement of IFAD with indigenous peoples’ issues, the Permanent Forum recommends that the Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility be incorporated into the organization’s general budget so as to guarantee sustainability and the transfer of good practices and lessons learned within IFAD programmes and projects. The Permanent Forum also recommends that the facility extend its funding directly to indigenous peoples’ organizations. Support for indigenous peoples’ organizations should have as its point of departure the co-administration and co implementation of the projects.