The Permanent Forum recognizes that education systems must be culturally safe and support Indigenous Peoples’ languages. The Forum reiterates the urgent need for Member States to protect Indigenous Peoples’ languages, both spoken and written, during the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, by adopting appropriate laws and policies.
The Permanent Forum recognizes the need for the United States of America to honour its treaty obligations with tribes. The Forum calls upon the Government of the United States to ensure the return of lands that house boarding schools to Indigenous Peoples.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Permanent Forum urges the Conference of the Parties to establish a commission, as early as possible, to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Framework, especially its target 3 on protecting 30 per cent of the planet’s land and water by 2030, with the full and equitable participation of Indigenous Peoples and respecting their rights to free, prior and informed consent. The establishment of robust grievance mechanisms is vital.
The Permanent Forum urges Member States and United Nations entities, in particular the World Health Organization (WHO), to recognize that Indigenous views of human and planetary health must be central to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and emphasizes the central need to stabilize and regenerate the biosphere as essential for protecting humanity. The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to health and development and the rights of Indigenous Peoples must be seen as interconnected and essential to an integrated planetary health governance framework.
In accordance with article 16 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, indigenous peoples have the right to full freedom of expression, including the right to establish their own media in their own languages. The Permanent Forum is concerned that indigenous peoples of Latin America have been criminalized for the establishment of community radio stations and urges Member States to protect the rights of indigenous communicators
The Permanent Forum also calls upon Member States to expand indigenous language immersion methods and bilingual schools to support indigenous children and youth to reclaim their languages. The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States, where appropriate, incorporate intercultural and bilingual education in national school curricula, including through language immersion programmes, and ensure that the language of the subnational region or area in which the school is located is part of the curricula. In this regard, the Permanent Forum recommends that Member States, in close cooperation with indigenous peoples, establish educational programmes on indigenous languages for indigenous teachers, filmmakers, translators and interpreters, scientists, information technology specialists and other professionals. Such efforts would support the expansion of domains covered by indigenous languages and, consequently, contribute to language development and maintenance and the restoration of indigenous peoples’ pride in their own languages.
The Permanent Forum regrets the lack of progress in enhancing participation by indigenous peoples at the World Intellectual Property Organization and reiterates previous requests that that Organization adopt a legally binding document to protect the traditional knowledge and intellectual property of indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum welcomes and endorses the recommendations of the above-mentioned workshop on indigenous traditional knowledge by emphasizing paragraphs 61-74 of the report of the Workshop (see E/C.19/2006/2).
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States actively engage with their indigenous peoples in both developed countries and developing countries, including indigenous women, indigenous youth and indigenous persons with disabilities, in developing key indicators on indigenous peoples, including for data disaggregation, to be included in the overall indicators for the post-2015 development agenda to be adopted in March 2016.
The Permanent Forum recommends that Member States, United Nations agencies and indigenous peoples’ organizations engage actively in the midterm evaluation of the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People and submit reports evaluating the implementation of the Decade at the national level.
Given that the United Nations relies on the cooperation of the people whom it serves and that everyone, individually and in association with others, has the right to unhindered access to and communication with the Organization, the Permanent Forum requests the Secretary-General, through the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights and in consultation with other relevant United Nations mechanisms, to report on trends related to intimidation and reprisals against indigenous peoples who seek to engage with the United Nations, including by providing suggestions to prevent and address reprisals through reporting from all parts of the United Nations system and with input from indigenous peoples, to the Forum at its eighteenth session, in 2019.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the full, effective and direct representation and participation of indigenous peoples, including their indigenous governments, councils, parliaments and other political institutions, should be ensured at all United Nations forums and multilateral and bilateral negotiations, and in the drafting processes of the corresponding emerging instruments, for example, those under discussion at the World Bank, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Such instruments must be harmonized with the Declaration, which is regarded as a reflection of the minimum human rights standards necessary for the promotion and protection of indigenous peoples, nations and communities. Such instruments should be consistent with or exceed those minimum standards.