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Addressee: WHO,PAHO
Full Text
The Permanent Forum therefore urges the World Health Organization to develop a strategy and programme to tackle self-harm and suicide among indigenous children and young people at the global level. The Forum recommends taking into account the initiatives that are being conducted at the regional level, in particular by the Pan American Health Organization, and using them as a basis for further expansion. As a first step, the Forum suggests that the World Health Organization gather evidence and initiate research on the prevalence of self-harm and suicide among indigenous children and young people at the global level and prepare a compilation of good practices on prevention of self-harm and suicide among indigenous young people, publishing its findings by 1 January 2017.
Responses
• The Permanent Forum members have been in regular contact with the Pan American Health Organization in follow up to this recommendation. PAHO, as the only WHO Regional Office having Ethnicity as a crosscutting theme, has been working on activities aimed at improving the mental health of indigenous peoples in for instance Columbia and Guyana with a special emphasis on suicide prevention. PAHO also organized a workshop in Chile with representatives from Chile, Argentina, Canada and Brazil to exchange and disseminate lessons learned in the field of mental health and indigenous peoples, including suicide prevention. The results of this workshop are about to be published. Lack of funding is a challenge for further expansion of the programmes in the region. PAHO is organizing a side event on Mental health and suicide prevention among indigenous peoples on Wednesday 18 May and have requested the participation of the PFII in this.
• The General Assembly Third Committee in its 2015 resolution A/RES/70/232, entitled “Rights of Indigenous Peoples” took the particular recommendation of PFII forward in paragraph 18, stating that the General Assembly “Encourages the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and other relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, in accordance with their mandates, to carry out research and evidence-gathering on the prevalence of suicide among indigenous youth and children and good practices on its prevention and to consider developing, as appropriate, strategies or policies, consistent with national priorities, in cooperation with Member States, to tackle it, including through consultation with indigenous peoples, in particular indigenous youth organizations”;
• A letter dated on 2 November 2015 from the Under-Secretary-General of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) was sent to WHO Director drawing attention to the Report of the UNPFII at its 14th session in 2015.
Final Report of UNPFII Session 14 (2015)
Area of Work
