The Forum also decides to give ongoing priority to two other cross-cutting issues: a. Data collection and segregation as a follow-up of recommendations by the technical workshop on data collection; b. Human rights. In collaboration with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Permanent Forum notes the general capacity-building efforts on access and benefit-sharing in the African region carried out under Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) of Germany and encourages further efforts to bolster indigenous participation in those workshops and also in developing workshops specifically for indigenous peoples and local communities.
The Permanent Forum recommends that FAO, in 2014, the International Year of Family Farming, organize and host an expert seminar on culture, food sovereignty and traditional livelihoods to feed into the post-2015 process. The seminar should include the participation of an elder, an adult and a young person from each of the seven sociocultural regions of the Forum.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the policy guides that are being developed by UN-Habitat, including on housing for indigenous peoples in the urban setting, which will be presented at the upcoming session of the World Urban Forum, to be held from 3 to 7 November 2008, in Nanjing, China. States are encouraged to support the production of the guidelines.
The Forum recommends that States reduce the rates of illiteracy, lack of schooling, truancy and dropouts and raise the rates of completed primary education through literacy campaigns and the design of indigenous, bilingual, inter-cultural educative and extramural models in the States where indigenous peoples live.
The Forum recommends that States rescue, foster and give publicity to the history and culture of indigenous peoples in the education systems of the world to strengthen their identity.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to adopt the terminology “indigenous peoples and local communities” as an accurate reflection of the distinct identities developed by those entities since the adoption of the Convention almost 20 years ago.
The Permanent Forum urges the international community to pay particular attention to the situation of the Batwa peoples, in particular Batwa women, and to support the inclusion of the San people and other indigenous groups in the national census. The Permanent Forum urges African States and their international development partners to review the poverty reduction strategy papers and other frameworks for integrating the specificities of such indigenous peoples as the Batwa, Pygmies, Touaregue, Amazigh, Khoisan and other hunter-gatherers or nomadic peoples in their countries, both in Central and in Southern Africa.
The Permanent Forum requests that the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people undertake a study on the rights of urban indigenous peoples and migration, paying particular attention to their ability to exercise and enjoy their economic and social rights, and that the study be considered at the eighth session of the Permanent Forum. The themes that could be considered in the study include cultural identity, equitable access to essential services, the challenges facing indigenous youth and border issues.
The Permanent Forum urges States that have not yet done so to ratify the Convention of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
Improve and increase indigenous women's economic and social conditions through: (a) expansion of employment opportunities; (b) Promotion of the professionalization of their traditional skills, arts and crafts; c) Access to resources, including microcredit, new technologies and agricultural input; (d) Support the regional meetings of indigenous women and organize training on international, regional and national mechanisms
Adopt measures that ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous women in implementation, follow-up work and monitoring of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals