The Permanent Forum urges all States to substantially increase the human, financial and technical resources made available to implement the Declaration, in accordance with article 39 thereof, and to overcome the remaining gaps between the formal recognition of indigenous peoples and the implementation of their rights.
The Permanent Forum notes the progress made in promoting indigenous peoples’ rights through the Programme to Promote ILO Convention No. 169 (PRO-169). The Permanent Forum urges ILO to maintain and strengthen this important project/programme.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the efforts undertaken to develop the indicators of sustainability and well-being of indigenous peoples should be continued and supported by States, the United Nations system and intergovernmental bodies. This will lead to the establishment of headline indicators to measure and represent the goals and aspirations of indigenous peoples. These initiatives should lead to the creation of an indigenous peoples development index, which the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) would adopt as a project to be included in future issues of the Human Development Report.
The global engagement of indigenous peoples at the international level has led to some positive institutional developments, including the establishment of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples can play an important role in the fight against climate change. Member States and United Nations entities should ensure that any activities related to the use of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples respect indigenous peoples’ own protocols and consent agreements for managing access to their traditional knowledge. Strengthening and ensuring the full participation of indigenous peoples at all levels is also critical for the design and implementation of climate policies, plans, programmes and projects at the local, national and global levels.
The Permanent Forum calls for heightened attention to be paid to diabetes and other non communicable diseases by WHO, PAHO and States, including at the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, to be held in 2014, and calls upon these parties to discuss issues relating to indigenous health and formulate an action plan with particular focus on improving prevention and access to the care of diabetes and non-communicable diseases.
The Permanent Forum recalls the fourth preambular paragraph of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which affirms that all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust. Legal and political justification for the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands, their disenfranchisement and the abrogation of their rights such as the doctrine of discovery, the doctrine of domination, “conquest”, “discovery”, terra nullius or the Regalian doctrine were adopted by colonizers throughout the world. While these nefarious doctrines were promoted as the authority for the acquisition of the lands and territories of indigenous peoples, there were broader assumptions implicit in the doctrines, which became the basis for the assertion of authority and control over the lives of indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. Indigenous peoples were constructed as “savages”, “barbarians”, “backward” and “inferior and uncivilized” by the colonizers who used such constructs to subjugate, dominate and exploit indigenous peoples and their lands, territories and resources. The Permanent Forum calls upon States to repudiate such doctrines as the basis for denying indigenous peoples’ human rights.
The Permanent Forum highlights the activities of those States that have undertaken or are currently undertaking constitutional revision processes to strengthen constitutional provisions on human rights, pluriculturalism and juridical pluralism, among others, and also welcomes those States that are in the midst of ongoing constitutional revision or reform processes. The Forum calls upon all relevant States to review and revise their constitutions and legal frameworks to comprehensively recognize the human rights of indigenous peoples. The Forum recommends that the process of constitutional revision in Member States should be driven by indigenous peoples.
As stated in its report on its first session, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues decided to make indigenous children and youth a focal point of its work in the years to come. The Forum reconfirms its commitment to do so, and acknowledges the efforts made by organizations representing indigenous peoples, United Nations agencies and States in the past year to tackle the urgent needs of the young generation, including the decision of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to declare indigenous children as the subject for its theme day, to be held in September 2003.
The Forum welcomes the inclusion in the 2003 Ibero-American Summit of a focus on indigenous children, and recommends that UNICEF report to the Forum on the results of the Summit in that area, and to indicate how lessons can be learned and policy approaches improved concerning indigenous children in other parts of the world with indigenous peoples, specifically Asia and Africa.
The Permanent Forum recommends that UNESCO, with the participation of indigenous peoples, urgently declare as the organization’s priority the preservation, revitalization and promotion of indigenous languages. UNESCO is also urged to initiate international processes for the establishment of international standards on the preservation of indigenous languages. In particular, the Forum recommends that UNESCO collaborate with efforts led by indigenous peoples and others to map indigenous languages, such as the Endangered Languages Project.
Given the large number of indigenous migrants within and beyond national borders and the particular vulnerability of indigenous women migrants, as well as the lack of adequate data and attention to their problems, the Forum recommends launching a new initiative involving various stakeholders, including the Inter-Agency Support Group, the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in order to face this urgency. The Forum recommends, as a first step, the convening of a workshop on the theme "Migration of indigenous women" in order to highlight the urgency and scale of the issue, including the alarming trend of trafficking indigenous women within and across national borders, and the development of recommendations and guidelines for addressing the problems faced by indigenous migrant women. Participants to the workshop should be a selected number of members of the Forum, relevant United Nations departments, agencies, funds and programmes, and experts from indigenous organizations,
NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, Governments and academia. The objectives of the workshop should be:
a.To underscore the urgency and scale of the issue;
b. To highlight and address the lack of reliable data on the issue and to promote the systematic collection of data (of both quantitative and qualitative nature) by relevant United Nations and other intergovernmental entities, Governments, NGOs, indigenous organizations, and academia;
c. To review and analyse existing data;
d. To provide a report, including recommendations, to the Forum.
During the dialogue with indigenous peoples on the Millennium Development Goals, many indigenous organizations made statements about the urgent need to redefine the Goals. While the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues appreciates that it may not be possible to redefine the Goals, it also recognizes that there is a clear need to redefine approaches to the implementation of the Goals so as to include the perspectives, concerns, experiences and world views of indigenous peoples. Statements also confirmed that there was a need for indigenous peoples to provide their own definitions of poverty and development and that there should be full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in the implementation of the Goals.