Meetings Coverage

It was crucial for the United Nations to get its message out through both the latest technologies, such as Twitter, and more traditional ones, such as radio, the head of the Department of Public Information told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today tackled emerging issues and matters related its future work, grappling with how to change a host of discriminatory policies ‑‑ and attitudes ‑‑ that had landed high numbers of indigenous youth in prison, perpetuated cyclical unemployment, favoured corporate interests over indigenous land rights and generally ignored native peoples’ vulnerability to climate change.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today held an in-depth dialogue with representatives of two United Nations entities working to better integrate the concerns of indigenous peoples and enhance their participation in the Organization’s work in two vital areas: access and benefit sharing from genetic resources; and protecting the practices and innovations of indigenous and local communities.

Concluding its special meeting on International Mother Earth Day this morning, the General Assembly heard appeals from developing States for concerted action to tackle environmental problems “consistent with moral and ethical values” at a time of great strain to the Earth. Recalling the events at Copenhagen, the representative of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines said that last-ditch efforts, though well intentioned, had produced a document that was “procedurally and substantively flawed”.

The Security Council must continue to improve its openness to non-Council-Member States, temporary members and the general public while ensuring its ability to act effectively and efficiently, speakers said in a day-long debate on the body’s working methods, in its chambers today.

“The violations of indigenous peoples are deep, systemic and widespread,”United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, as he briefed delegates on the second year of his mandate.

The international community must find solutions to today’s environmental challenges to produce the right conditions for sustainable peace and development, said General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki at a special meeting to commemorate International Mother Earth Day, with speakers stressing that those solutions must be equitable, fair and reasonable.

Corroborating reports that indigenous Guaraní communities in South America’s vast Chaco region -- shared by Bolivia and Paraguay -- continued to be routinely chased off their lands, pressed into debt bondage and forced to live in squalor, members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues called today on both Governments to take full responsibility for ending forced labour and expropriation of ancestral lands and territories.

The Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory did not give any indication of change, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today. Riyad Mansour said that Israel continued on the path of violating international law, including international humanitarian law, particularly with regard to the continuation of settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The devastating impacts of logging, mining and land conversion had displaced indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, commercialized their cultures and politically repressed their leaders, speakers in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues stressed today, as they pressed the 16-member advisory body -– and their Governments -- for help in achieving equitable and “restorative” development in their countries.