The Forum recommends that Member States investigate the alarming rate of incarceration of indigenous women and communicate their findings to the Permanent Forum
The Permanent Forum calls on the entities of the United Nations system to collaborate with indigenous peoples in designing and implementing early warning systems to better ensure peace, security and good governance in their lands. That could include greater coordination between the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and indigenous peoples through their representative institutions.
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 urges relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, including FAO, IFAD, ILO, UNEP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, UN-Women and the World Bank, to recognize and support this form of cultivation.
The Forum is fully aware of the close links between conflict and poverty. Conflicts cause poverty and reverse development. The Forum invites those United Nations agencies, funds and programmes working in areas of conflict to consider the special needs of indigenous peoples in their work.
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 urges UNDP to strengthen its institutional capacity on indigenous peoples’ issues by establishing a task force to serve as a liaison mechanism between headquarters and focal points on indigenous issues at the country level. Furthermore, the Forum recommends that these focal points be specialists on indigenous peoples’ issues.
Taking into account paragraphs 11, 14, 15, 17 and 26 of the outcome document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples and article 23 of the United Nations Declaration, the Permanent Forum reminds Member States of the need to implement their commitments through national action plans, strategies or other measures, developed jointly and effectively with indigenous representatives on the basis of the right of free, prior and informed consent, in particular to ensure the adequate training and availability of health professionals in indigenous communities as a matter of urgency.
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.