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Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: Sixteenth Session - 5th Meeting
Participants also take up special needs of young people in implementing 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
The empowerment of indigenous women as powerful agents of change could only strengthen their communities and nations in the face of environmental and other challenges, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today.
Addressing the Forum’s ongoing sixteenth session, speakers recalled the many challenges faced by indigenous women — sexual violence, lack of educational opportunities and their absence from decision-making — but many also cast a spotlight on what they could achieve going forward.
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s speaker said innovative models existed where communities drove social change by using cultural knowledge — in art, traditional foods, tourism and therapeutic trades — to create economic opportunities. She recommended that the Permanent Forum urge States to adequately fund indigenous organizations to promote self-determination and women’s participation, and to establish accountability measures as a way of reducing violence, imprisonment and child removals.
Finland’s representative, on behalf of the Nordic countries, called indigenous women change agents who passed indigenous culture and language on to future generations. Identifying and addressing discrimination, as well as the causes and consequences of violence against indigenous women and girls, “goes to the heart of promoting gender equality and empowerment,” he said, emphasizing that indigenous women and girls must be free to make informed decisions over their own bodies.
The speaker from the International Indian Treaty Council, referring to the use of toxic pesticide, said environmental violence impacted the right to health, including reproductive health. Her counterpart from the Asia Indigenous Women’s Network said States and indigenous communities should create mechanisms to ensure equal access to land tenure for indigenous women. The speaker of the Indigenous People of Africa Coordinating Committee said the role of men and boys should be encouraged to combat violence against women.
Today’s meeting also took up the situation of indigenous youth, with speakers emphasizing the importance of addressing their special needs in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Many called for an end the criminalization of protests seeking to protect indigenous people’s rights.
In the morning, the Permanent Forum continued its discussion of the six mandated areas related to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Many speakers emphasized the challenges faced by their communities that involved land and water rights as well as the right to self-determination.
In that context, the speaker from Pahtamawiikan, stressing that indigenous peoples would be victimized by “America’s new bully-in-chief”, requested that a peacekeeping force be deployed throughout the United States. His counterpart from the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade said it was time to “unsettle” settler States and adopt an enforceable covenant on the rights of indigenous peoples.
Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild, member of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, setting out several recommendations, said States and corporations must be held accountable for ensuring that resource development did not violate treaty rights.
The speaker from the Organizacion Nacional Indigena de Colombia said that, while Colombia was in the midst of a peace process, indigenous peoples’ rights were being violated, with dozens killed in April in the absence of legislation to protect them. In Africa, said the speaker from the Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association, indigenous peoples used to be a political taboo, but it was essential to discuss them in order to tackle deep-rooted social and political ills.
From Asia, the speaker from the Society for Threatened Peoples said that, in 2016 and 2017, China had increased pressure on the Uyghur people and their cultural and linguistic rights. Responding, China’s delegate said that was a false statement and that not all countries had indigenous peoples.
Commenting on the discussion, Les Malezer, Permanent Forum member from Australia, said rights must be recognized and respected within the laws of a State. The plethora of reported violations of prior consent principles clearly indicated that the rule of law was not being applied, he said.
Also speaking today were representatives of South Africa, Nepal, Viet Nam, Guyana, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Russian Federation, Ecuador and Denmark.
Also delivering statements were representatives of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, Indonesia National Commission on Human Rights, Forest Peoples’ Programme, Kimberly Land Council of Australia, American Indian Law Alliance, Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indígenas-Campesinas de Bolivia, Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti, National Khoi and San Council, Confederacíon Sindical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., National Indigenous Women’s Forum, Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, Centro para la Autonomia y Desarollo de los Pueblos Indigenas, Kapaeeng Foundation, Land Is Life, Inc., VIVAT International and Franciscans International, Assyrian Aid Society, International Native Tradition Interchange, Congrès Mondial Amazigh, Te Hika o Papauma, Global Centre of Indigenous Language Excellence, Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation, Fiji Indigenous Peoples’ Foundation, CHIRAPAQ, National Human Rights Institution of Norway, MADRE, International Indigenous Women’s Forum, Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, Congrès Mondial Amazigh, Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Programme, Gitanmaax Band, Finnish Sami Youth Organization, Asian Indigenous Peoples’ Pact and National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Representatives from the International Development Law Organization, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also spoke.
Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Chair of the sixty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women, addressed the Permanent Forum by video message.
Permanent Forum members from Denmark, Peru, South Africa, Mexico, Russian Federation, Finland, Cameroon and the United States made interventions.
The Permanent Forum will reconvene at 10 a.m. on Friday, 28 April, to continue its sixteenth session.
