The Permanent Forum calls for the implementation on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives clear guidance to States on the need for them to minimize childhood exposure to toxic chemicals through water, food, air and other sources of exposure. It is critical that environmental regulators be educated specifically regarding article 24 of the Convention.
The Permanent Forum urges States to generate statistics disaggregated by ethnicity, gender, indigenous identity, language, language skills and self-identification, and to provide sources of data to allow for a more accurate assessment of whether indigenous children and youth are actually benefiting from the expenditure earmarked for them. The Forum also urges United Nations agencies, funds and programmes to support member States in generating statistics and the United Nations agencies, funds and programmes and academic centres to produce a toolkit that provides a comprehensive and an accurate overview of human development indicators concerning indigenous children and youth.
Special attention should be paid to indigenous peoples at the High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development to be held during the sixty-first session of the General Assembly in New York on 14 and 15 September 2006. Given that indigenous peoples are closely tied to their communities, the impact exerted by their migration is often broader than that exerted by individual migration. In particular, indigenous migration affects the collective rights of indigenous communities and accordingly has consequences for entire communities.
The Forum recommends to Governments the design and implementation of mechanisms for resolving the problems related to land tenure and access to credits, with quality and efficiency and without affecting indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum recommends that social and environmental impact assessments, including human rights impact assessments and poverty impact assessments, of financial investments and trade agreements directly affecting indigenous peoples be undertaken, and that the resources for those assessments be provided by the sources of the investments and the parties to trade agreements.
The Permanent Forum calls on indigenous peoples’ organizations, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations to develop popular education materials on climate change and climate mitigation and adaptation measures and undertake education and training activities at the local levels. The Forum also recommends that ICT be used to disseminate and raise awareness of indigenous peoples’ perspectives and issues on climate change.
The Forum recommends that the relevant United Nations entities, in particular the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in particular its Division for the Advancement of Women, UNICEF, UNIFEM, the Department of Public Information and ILO:
(a) Encourage the dissemination of information in indigenous languages at the local level, concerning the rights of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women;
(b) Encourage and support the training of indigenous women in human rights and the rule of law;
(c) Provide technical assistance to governments to establish the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women.
The Permanent Forum recommends that forests that have been taken by States from indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent in the name of conservation policies be restored immediately.
States Members of the United Nations and indigenous peoples must continue their constructive dialogue under the auspices of the President of the General Assembly, within the framework of the relevant decisions of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the Human Rights Council. It is also important to continue to make use of and explore ways to improve the opportunities provided through the existing formats and modalities of the Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Human Rights Council and various entities of the United Nations system. In that regard, the Permanent Forum welcomes the adoption by the Assembly of resolution 75/168 and the continuation of the dialogue within the context of the Forum at its twenty-first session.
The Forum takes note of the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people to the Commission on Human Rights submitted in 2005 (E/CN.4/2005/88), the report of a seminar on education and indigenous peoples organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO held in Paris (E/CN.4/2005/88/Add.4), on a workshop on higher education and indigenous peoples in Costa Rica in 1999 (E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1999/5) and the minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction developed by the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergency, and underlines that their recommendations should be promoted through good practices throughout the United Nations system and broadly to all Member States
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Commission on the Status of Women consider the empowerment of indigenous women as a priority theme of its sixty-first session, in 2017, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the progress made towards developing plans to realize the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and New Zealand. The Permanent Forum invites Canada and New Zealand to present their final plans on constructive cooperation at the twenty-second session of the Permanent Forum, to be held in 2023.