The Forum recommends that Member States put in place policies and mechanisms to increase indigenous women’s access to markets and capital in order to enable them to turn their traditional skills into sustainable forms of income generation.
The Permanent Forum requests UNESCO to host a joint seminar with the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other relevant United Nations mechanisms for the purpose of exploring the development of a new international mechanism on the repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains. Furthermore, the Forum calls upon all States with national repositories of indigenous cultural items and ancestral remains, including museums and universities, to work with UNESCO to create an international database and inventory of these items accessible to indigenous peoples as a basis for initiating dialogue.
Noting that the Economic and Social Council, at its substantive session of 2003, will devote its high-level segment to rural development, the Forum recommends that the Council, in formulating its conclusions, take into account the unique cultural identities of indigenous peoples and the necessity for their meaningful participation in the planning, implementation and evaluation of programmes dealing with rural development.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the World Bank engage the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Permanent Forum in the development of guidance for the implementation of the new performance standard 7: Indigenous peoples, of the International Finance Corporation performance standards on environmental and social sustainability.
The Permanent Forum acknowledges the project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), entitled “Linking indigenous peoples with regional development”, which involves indigenous leaders and communities in Australia, Canada and Sweden, and encourages OECD and its member States to expand the project.
The Permanent Forum expresses concern about the situation of indigenous men, who, in the development process, suffer losses in their traditional livelihoods in their family structures and their roles in the community, and face social challenges as a result, as shown by many social indices, and urges United Nations agencies to undertake a study on the changing role of indigenous men in the economic development process.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations system, the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank and other multilateral development banks formulate policies to ensure that indigenous education projects that are financed take into account the use, protection and intercultural preservation of indigenous languages through supporting bilingual, intercultural and multilingual education in indigenous languages. The International Monetary Fund should respect the rights of indigenous peoples recognized in international law.
The Permanent Forum encourages States, multilateral environmental agencies and other conservation agencies to adopt a rights-based approach to conservation and follow-up and to systematically evaluate how the rights are implemented.
The Forum recommends that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change consider the possible establishment of an ad hoc open-ended intersessional working group on indigenous peoples and local communities and climate change, whose objectives would be to study and propose timely, effective and adequate solutions to respond to the urgent situations caused by climate change that indigenous peoples and local communities face. The Forum furthermore recommends that the Convention consider providing necessary funding support to Forum members and indigenous peoples to guarantee their participation and to strengthen their participation.
The Forum recommends the creation of a global, legally binding regime for toxic industrial chemicals and hazardous pesticides, the vast majority of which are currently unregulated under existing conventions, to protect the rights of everyone, including indigenous peoples, from the grave threats to human rights presented by the ongoing chemical intensification of the global economy. Such a regime should have strong accountability and compliance mechanisms and be in conformity with international human rights standards, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Permanent Forum is concerned about the growing impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on the lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples around the world. The Forum recommends that the International Organization for Migration and other relevant organizations provide technical cooperation and operational assistance to those Governments and communities planning organized migration management solutions for climate change and environmental refugees and migrants, giving priority, according to the principle of free, prior and informed consent, to the assisted voluntary resettlement and reintegration of those indigenous communities whose territories are no longer inhabitable.
The Permanent Forum recognizes the right to participate in decision-making and the importance of mechanisms and procedures for the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples in relation to article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Forum reiterates that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the International Maritime Organization should facilitate indigenous peoples’ participation in their processes.