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Addressee: Member States
Paragraph Number: 19
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
Member States should consider the adoption and full implementation of comprehensive national indigenous education policies based on the following goals:
Participation:
a) Establishing effective arrangements for the participation of indigenous parents and community members in decisions regarding the planning, delivery and evaluation of education services for their children, young people and other community members;
b) Increasing the number of indigenous people employed as educational administrators, teachers, coaches, officials, curriculum advisers, teacher’s assistants, home-school liaison officers and other education workers, including community members engaged in teaching indigenous culture, history and contemporary society, and indigenous languages;
c) Developing arrangements for the provision of independent advice from indigenous communities regarding educational decisions at all levels;
d) Achieving the participation of indigenous children, young people and adults in education for a period similar to that of other students;
Access:
e) Ensuring that indigenous children, young people and adults have access to all levels of education (including adult education) on a basis comparable to that available to other citizens;
Attainment:
f) Enabling indigenous students to attain skills and graduation rates up to the same standard as other students throughout the compulsory and non-compulsory schooling years;
g) Developing teaching forms and curricula based on mother tongue (additive learning) in primary and secondary education (should be mandatory in order to achieve goal (f) above);
h) Developing curricula for both primary and secondary education which reflect the insights and usefulness of indigenous knowledge systems and are sensitive to indigenous values. Curricula should:
i) Incorporate indigenous histories, traditional knowledge and spiritual values;
ii) Integrate indigenous oral traditions, myths and writings, acknowledging these as unique parts of world heritage;
Indigenous languages, proficiency in the national language, literacy and numeracy :
i) Developing programmes based on the child’s mother tongue (first language) as a foundation for learning and aiming at the maintenance and continued use of indigenous languages;
j) Enabling the attainment of proficiency in the commonly used national language and at least one international language, and numeracy competencies by all indigenous students, including indigenous adults, giving particular attention to indigenous women based on the framework of the United Nations Decade of Literacy;
Capacity-building:
k) Providing community education services which will enable indigenous peoples to develop the skills to manage the development of their communities;
l) Providing education and training services to develop the skills of indigenous people to participate in educational decision-making;
Appreciation, understanding and respect for indigenous cultures:
m) Enabling all students, both indigenous and non-indigenous, at all levels of education, to have an appreciation and understanding of and respect for traditional and contemporary indigenous histories, cultures and identities;
Anti-racism strategies:
n) Promoting anti-racism education, including strategies to empower young people to deal with racism in the compulsory schooling curriculum;
Cultural, social and economic development in education:
o) Indigenous peoples should be resourced and supported to establish their own education systems, including schools, should they so choose. Also, traditional indigenous education and its structures should be respected and supported;
Education for indigenous peoples in custody or detention:
p) Given the overrepresentation of indigenous youth and adults in detention, the Forum urges States to consider culturally relevant and appropriate education for indigenous peoples in detention centres;
q) The Forum asks that education plans, programmes and policies be implemented especially for indigenous girls, boys and women.
Area of Work: Education
Paragraph Number: 89
Session: 3 (2004)
Full Text:
The goals of the Forum in this area are the promotion of cooperation, the exchange of information and the development of partnerships, as well as to improve coordination by facilitating regular contacts and reports. The Forum intends to address and report on this theme on an annual basis. The Forum, reaffirming its recommendations on health made at its first and second reports, in the spirit of the theme of its third session (Indigenous women), recommends that all relevant United Nations entities, especially WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments:
(a)Fully incorporate the principle that health is a fundamental human right in all health policies and programmes, and foster rights-based approaches to health, including treaty rights, the right to culturally acceptable and appropriate services and indigenous women’s reproductive rights, and stop programmes of forced sterilization and abortion, which can constitute ethnic genocide;
(b)Further develop and disseminate information about innovative strategies in health services to indigenous women, informed by indigenous concepts and understanding of health, wellness, healing, illness, disease, sexuality and birthing so as to ensure universal and accessible health-care services for indigenous women and girl children, and make available adequate financial and technical support for comprehensive, community-based, primary health services and health education, incorporating traditional indigenous components;
(c)Train and employ qualified indigenous women to design, administer and manage their own health-care programmes;
(d) Set up monitoring mechanisms for indigenous communities to report abuses and neglect with the health system to national health authorities, and put in place the legal framework to effectively address these issues;
(e) Encourage States to include and accredit traditional, indigenous health practitioners (physicians), including traditional birth attendants (midwives), and integrate them into state health-care systems, and give full recognition to the medicinal knowledge and medicines of these indigenous practitioners;
(f) Augment HIV/AIDS programmes by providing educational materials in indigenous languages and by using specially trained indigenous HIV/AIDS health workers to conduct outreach services and home care to indigenous communities, including voluntary testing for HIV/AIDS;
(g) Ensure that indigenous peoples, especially women, have access to all information relating to their medical treatment and to secure their prior informed consent to medical treatment;
(h) Provide appropriate health services and protection services, including safe houses, to displaced refugee and migrant women and women and girl children victimized by trafficking for prostitution;
(i) Implement the recommendations of the international consultation on health of indigenous peoples, held in Geneva at WHO in 1999, with special emphasis on the recommendations concerning the health of women and girls and the role of women in health care, indigenous knowledge and service provisions;
(j)Develop, in conjunction with indigenous women health providers, programmes to inform and sensitize indigenous women and men about cultural practices which have negative impacts on health, including female genital mutilation, child marriages and violence against women and the girl child in the domestic context, in order to encourage them to take precautions and safeguard the health and well being of the indigenous family;
(k)Ensure that the treatment of diseases is balanced by the promotion of health through the support of physical activity, sports and physical education in order to address escalating health concerns through prevention.
Area of Work: Health
