Welcome to the United Nations
Addressee: UNDP, OHCHR
Full Text
The Permanent Forum intends to make the formulation of an indigenous peoples’ development index, based on the human rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration and international human rights instruments, a recurring part of its agenda. The Forum recommends that the United Nations Development Programme, especially its Human Development Report Office, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights assist the Forum in developing such an index, building on existing initiatives by indigenous peoples and United Nations agencies, and report thereon to the Forum at its fifteenth session
Responses
• Due to the multiple elements of the PFII mandate and its status and place within the United Nations system, it remains crucial to develop and implement our own Indicators consistent with the UNDRIP and to engage Indigenous peoples’ representatives, e.g. statisticians, academics and their respective institutions in this. PFII highlight that such an approach should start from UNDRIP – and not as the current approaches to an "indigenous" INDEX has done try to adapt the 2030 indicators to the UNDRIP. As Indigenous peoples have argued in the context of the UNDRIP, the standards affirmed therein are inter-related, inter-connected, inter-dependent and indivisible. • In October 2015, Chairperson, Megan Davis, and Vice Chairperson Joan Carling attended the expert group meeting on the Way forward: Indigenous Peoples and the 2030 Agenda, organised by the Secretariat of PFII. At the meeting, the experts discussed the proposed index, suggesting amongst others to base it on existing indigenous peoples’ indicator initiatives, to focus it on issues of importance for indigenous peoples - not only 2030 Agenda indicators, to ensure necessary capacity building on data/statistics and to further clarify the PFII's role and use of the index. The working group on the index also suggested considering a separate meeting to continue these discussions. The Secretariat of the PFII has been in contact with the OHCHR and UNDP related to this recommendation and both partners have expressed willingness to work further with the PFII on an index. Both also expressed plans to engage in further work related to ensuring indigenous-relevant data in the Sustainable Development Goals, including better data disaggregation. Their reports say: • OHCHR highlighted their work to ensure integration of human rights, including data disaggregation, in the 2030 Agenda. In this regards, they conducted an expert group meeting on human rights-based approaches to data and statistics in October 2015 to discuss ways to best assess progress for disadvantaged groups, including indigenous peoples. OHCHR has developed a guidance note on this (see attached). • UNDP reports that a UNDP Policy Advisor and the Chief of Statistics from the Human Development Report Office spoke at the PF 2015 session on disaggregated statics and an "Indigenous Human Development/Human Rights Indicators". Moreover, UNDP has advocated for data disaggregation according to indigenous identifiers in the 2030 Agenda global framework - and will continue to do so during regional and national implementation of the 2030 Agenda
Final Report of UNPFII Session 14 (2015)
Area of Work
