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.
The Permanent Forum urges States to expand opportunities to enable indigenous women to participate actively in the political life of the country in which they live. The Forum also urges States to ensure the safety of indigenous women who are defending the rights of their peoples and territories and to prosecute those persons involved in incidents of violence against them.
States are urged to allocate budgets in order to implement quality services to reduce maternal mortality and ensure indigenous women’s access to reproductive health services.
States, the United Nations system and other intergovernmental organizations should support the efforts of indigenous peoples to build, articulate and implement their visions of and strategies for development. They should provide adequate funding, technical and institutional support and training to enable indigenous peoples to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and for indigenous peoples to participate effectively in the planning, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects
The Forum notes that the Fifth World Indigenous Education Conference will be held in New Zealand in November and December 2005, and urges UNESCO to seek to be actively involved in this conference, in particular in dissemination of information on UNESCO projects, programs and activities relating to indigenous education and relevant to UNESCO responsibilities in pursuing Millennium Development Goal 2
The Permanent Forum recommends that States ensure that the participation of indigenous peoples in subnational and local decision-making bodies is based on equality and non-discrimination and on respecting indigenous peoples’ rights to choose their own representatives in accordance with their own procedures.
The Permanent Forum calls on States, in consultation with indigenous peoples, to establish national judicial institutions tasked with identifying lands, waters, coastal waters and other resources to which the indigenous peoples concerned have established ownership and usufruct rights, and to demarcate such lands and resources.
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States and United Nations agencies recognize indigenous peoples as distinct stakeholders and make a specific separate reference to indigenous peoples, and not simply include them under the terms “marginalized and vulnerable groups”, in both the sustainable development goals and the post-2015 development agenda, including the Small Island Developing States process, and that this recommendation, with the specific recognition of indigenous peoples’ views and priorities for development, should be reflected in the goals and targets to be developed, including appropriate indicators and data disaggregation.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the decision of the Intergovernmental Committee to organize, in cooperation with the Forum, expert preparatory meetings on the Intergovernmental Committee process for indigenous peoples representing the seven geopolitical regions recognized by the Forum.