The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ensure a significant focus on refugee issues in the Pacific region, giving particular attention to the vulnerability of indigenous peoples in that region.
The Permanent Forum thanks countries in Asia that have already incorporated indigenous languages into primary education and urges Member States and the United Nations system to provide funding to implement policies related to indigenous languages and ensure the incorporation of indigenous languages into the curricula at all education levels.
The Permanent Forum notes the organization of preparatory meetings for indigenous youth for its sixteenth session, including the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus meeting hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Forum recommends that this practice be scaled up in 2018, with representative participation of indigenous youth through indigenous peoples’ organizations from all regions, and invites FAO to report on progress achieved to the Forum at its seventeenth session.
With the COVID-19 pandemic preventing in-person meetings, the Permanent Forum held virtual regional dialogues with indigenous peoples from all seven sociocultural regions of the world in preparation for its twentieth session. The dialogues highlighted cross-cutting issues affecting indigenous peoples across the globe, including the adverse effects of the pandemic, discrimination, the need for disaggregated data, and indigenous peoples’ rights to lands, territories and resources. A full summary of the regional dialogues is available at the Permanent Forum website.[1] The Forum is committed to continuing to organize virtual regional dialogues in the context of building back better and the recovery from the pandemic. The Permanent Forum invites the secretariat of the Forum to continue to support these dialogues.
The Permanent Forum recommends that urban indigenous issues be given important consideration on the agenda of the fourth session of the World Urban Forum, and notes the organization by UN-Habitat of a round-table event on this theme. The Forum urges States, United Nations agencies and indigenous peoples’ organizations to cooperate with UN-Habitat in the lead up to this and other events at the fourth session, including through input and participation.
The Forum, further recognizing the long-term benefits for indigenous peoples of training and education opportunities within the United Nations system, such as the establishment of an indigenous fellowship network by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, requests the Office to invite Permanent Forum Members and the secretariat of the Forum to the meeting of the indigenous fellowship network, scheduled to be held August 2004 in Barcelona.
The Permanent Forum recognizes that the United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity and that indigenous peoples, as custodians of the Earth’s biodiversity, should be major players in actions planned for 2010. In that spirit, the Permanent Forum calls for close cooperation between the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Forum in promoting the International Year and in highlighting the role of indigenous peoples as custodians of biodiversity.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the approval of the approach to recognizing and working with indigenous and local knowledge adopted at the fifth plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, in 2017, and the establishment of a participatory mechanism for indigenous peoples and local communities in the work of the Platform. The Forum urges the identification of procedures and methodologies for effective implementation of the approach and the participatory mechanism, in partnership with indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum is deeply concerned about the particular vulnerabilities
of indigenous children. In this regard, it notes the study of the Expert Mechanism on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the rights of the indigenous child under the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (A/HRC/48/74) and
the note by the Secretariat entitled “Update on the promotion and application of the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: violence against
children” (E/C.19/2022/4), prepared in collaboration with the Special Representative
of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children. The Permanent Forum calls
upon Member States to prioritize the human rights of indigenous children and young
people, in cooperation with indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum further calls
upon those States that have not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
including its three Optional Protocols – on a communications procedure, on the sale
of children, child prostitution and child pornography and on the involvement of
children in armed conflict, to do so as soon as possible.
The Permanent Forum invites Member States to organize intersessional meetings to discuss cooperation on pertinent topics with the Permanent Forum.
The Permanent Forum urges the European Union to include the standards of the Declaration within its corporate sustainability due diligence regulations and rules, in particular in the context of implementing the Critical Raw Materials Act on the territories of Indigenous Peoples, both inside and outside the European Union.