The Permanent Forum recalls that, more than 10 years ago, the International Fund for Agricultural Development established an indigenous forum, which the Forum has repeatedly recognized as a good practice and recommended that other United Nations entities should follow. However, despite these recommendations, other entities have not done so, with the notable exception of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Forum reiterates its recommendation that United Nations entities should incorporate indigenous-driven platforms in order to give advice on and promote indigenous peoples’ issues and should consider the participation of the Permanent Forum together with indigenous peoples in such platforms.
The Permanent Forum highlights the continued misappropriation and illicit use of indigenous peoples’ intellectual property and cultural heritage by enterprises and individuals that use it for their own vested interests or benefits. The Permanent Forum stresses that the intellectual property rights held by indigenous peoples, including with regard to data and knowledge, should not be exploited or be taken by private companies and individuals without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned. The principle of free, prior and informed consent and the stringent application of relevant safeguards and policies promulgated by United Nations system entities also applies to intellectual property rights in the context of industrial, forestry, mining and other projects conducted on indigenous peoples’ lands and territories. This also applies to relevant international instruments, such as the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity.