The Permanent Forum welcomes the participation, at its seventeenth session, of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination and invites the Working Group to conduct a study on private militaries and security companies in extractive industries and agribusiness and their impact on the human and collective rights of indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum reiterates previous recommendations that WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments, fully incorporate a cultural perspective into health policies and programmes and reproductive health services aimed at providing indigenous women with quality health care, including emergency obstetric care, voluntary family planning and skilled attendance at birth. The roles of traditional midwives should be re-evaluated and expanded so that they may assist indigenous women during their reproductive health processes and act as cultural brokers between health systems and indigenous peoples.