Economic and Social Council

Bedouin Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank were in dire need of access to their traditional natural resources — rangeland and water — as well as basic health and education services, denied to them since their forcible displacement from the Negev Desert in 1948, community representative Mohamed Al Korshan said at a Headquarters press conference today.

With nearly a billion people living without access to an improved water source and 2.5 billion lacking access to improved sanitation facilities, the world faced a “true crisis” the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, during a half-day discussion on the right to water.

Wrapping up what the United Nations Secretariat called one of its “most successful sessions” since the 1990s, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) adjourned its resumed 2011 session today, having taken note of its draft report, to be adopted at a later date.

A strategic approach was urgently needed to address “disturbing” gaps between the world’s richest and poorest children — in particular indigenous children — said delegates to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, as it met with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representatives this morning.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today voted to deny the granting of consultative status for the International Lesbian and Gay Association, thus closing its application after 10 years of repeated deferral.

Indigenous peoples must be consulted — and their right to free, prior and informed consent respected — if the target of halving the proportion of people lacking access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation was to be reached by 2015, in line with the Millennium Development Goals, members of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Using $1.5 million in start-up funds supplied by the Government of Denmark, the United Nations Indigenous Partnership (UNIPP) would work at the country level to promote dialogue and build partnerships, Raja Devashish Roy, a member of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said at Headquarters today.

The uneven development and persistent socio-economic gaps suffered by indigenous populations across the Latin America and Caribbean region undoubtedly stemmed from the historical wrongs committed on its first peoples and the strategic means for correcting those wrongs needed urgent revision, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was told today during a half-day discussion on that region, as it rounded out the first week of its tenth session.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today recommended 10 entities for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, and postponed its consideration of 32 applications.

While the global consensus that now stood behind the 2007 Declaration on Indigenous Rights should be celebrated, its implementation remained a “constant challenge” and strong efforts were needed, nationally and internationally, to make its principles “alive in the reality on the ground”, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was told today during a full-day discussion of human rights concerns.