The Permanent Forum wishes to express its appreciation to the Inter-Agency Support Group for its contribution to the work of the Forum, and encourages all United Nations agencies to join the Group, particularly those whose area of work is of special relevance for the rights and well-being of indigenous peoples, such as the World Health Organization.
The Permanent Forum calls upon the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to work in partnership with other members of the Inter-Agency Support Group and donors to organize regional workshops for the purposes of information exchange and capacity-building among Governments, indigenous peoples and local communities and other stakeholders with regard to the proposed international regime on access and benefit-sharing. In addition, the secretariat is called upon to provide financial support for indigenous networks to disseminate information, in appropriate and accessible languages, and through appropriate media, to indigenous communities on this issue.
The Permanent Forum recommends that interested parties organize an international expert group meeting on the theme “Indigenous peoples: sacred plants and sites, articles 11, 24 and 31 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, and requests that the conclusions of such a meeting be submitted to the Forum at its tenth session.
The Permanent Forum expresses its thanks to the Governments of Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Canada, China, the Congo, Denmark, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Norway, the Russian Federation, Spain and the United States, as well as the government of Greenland, for having hosted previous pre-sessional and intersessional meetings of the Forum. The Forum stresses the importance of organizing such pre-sessional and intersessional meetings and reiterates its recommendation that States that have not yet done so consider hosting such meetings in the future. It also requests that the secretariat of the Forum organize pre-sessional meetings for future sessions of the Forum.
The Forum decides to appoint Yuri Boychenko and Parshuram Tamang, members of the Forum, as Special Rapporteurs, to prepare, without financial implications, a working paper on current practices and methods of work to be submitted at the fifth session of the Permanent Forum
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States strengthen and implement legal and institutional frameworks that recognize and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their lands, territories and resources and ensure their participation in decision-making processes. Such frameworks should adhere to the Declaration and Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization, ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent when development, environment, biodiversity and climate change programmes and projects are conducted on their lands and territories.