Redefining the Millennium Development Goals provides an opportunity to incorporate into the Goals the concerns of indigenous peoples, particularly indigenous women. The Goals offer a strategic framework within which to fully integrate the goals of the Platform for Action, which provides an important human rights-based approach to the development agenda for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, including indigenous women.
The Permanent Forum urges States to intensify efforts at the national level to implement Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) of 31 October 2000 on women, peace and security, including through national action plans that pay special attention to indigenous women.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the initiative of IOM to establish a coordination mechanism for combating the trafficking of indigenous women and girls.
States are urged to allocate budgets in order to implement quality services to reduce maternal mortality and ensure indigenous women’s access to reproductive health services.
The Permanent Forum recommends that UNFPA continue its work in support of the participation of indigenous women in regional and national consultations, including training and other capacity-building programmes
The Platform for Action, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women, included indigenous women among those who had encountered particular barriers to full equality and advancement, both as women and as members of their communities. The review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform for Action acknowledged that indigenous women continued to face many obstacles and challenges, which included multiple forms of discrimination based on gender, race and ethnicity, as well as the impact of globalization and environmental degradation.
The Permanent Forum recommends that appropriate United Nations organizations, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as well as States, take immediate action to review and monitor the situation of indigenous women and provide comprehensive reports on violence against indigenous women and girls, particularly sexual violence and violence in the context of armed conflict. Indigenous women must be full participants in this process.
The Permanent Forum is deeply concerned that the problems and discrimination facing indigenous children and youth are not reflected in the Millennium Development Goals, and it urges States and United Nations organizations to develop culturally sensitive policies, programmes and projects that fully incorporate indigenous children and youth into achieving the Goals.
The Permanent Forum recommends that all States apply the principles of general comment No. 11 (2009) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, entitled “Indigenous children and their rights under the Convention”.
The Permanent Forum urges United Nations organizations, non-governmental organizations, States and other supportive organizations to facilitate, support and fund local, regional and international youth activities and other upcoming training workshops and forums.
The Permanent Forum confirms its commitment to making indigenous children and youth an ongoing part of its work. In so doing, it acknowledges the efforts made by organizations representing indigenous peoples, United Nations bodies and States to address the urgent needs of indigenous children and youth, including in the areas of education, health, culture, extreme poverty, mortality, sexual exploitation, militarization, displacement, removal by missionaries, incarceration and labour, among others.
The Permanent Forum urges UNDP to further strengthen the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples by choosing indigenous peoples’ organizations as their implementing partners and responsible parties in their projects involving indigenous peoples, especially those with established track records in project implementation. As a corollary to the foregoing, government agencies created to promote and protect the rights and interests of indigenous peoples should be preferred as implementing partners in UNDP programming on indigenous peoples’ issues so that they can effectively perform their mandate