Economic and Social Council

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.

“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.

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 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.

The annual United Nations forum on indigenous issues opened today with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on Member States to promote development while respecting indigenous cultures and traditions, and with the Government of New Zealand taking the opportunity to announce that it would reverse its decision and support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples.

The Government of New Zealand was now in support of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Pita Sharples, Minister of Māori Affairs of New Zealand, told correspondents today at a Headquarters press conference on the opening day of the ninth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The impacts of development policies on indigenous peoples’ culture and identity will be the focus of a two-week meeting beginning Monday, 19 April, at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Effective participation and consultation of indigenous peoples is central to such policies.

Concerned that 9 million children under 5 years old died each year from largely preventable conditions, and that persistent health inequities, both among and within countries, were impeding improved health outcomes, the Commission on Population and Development today concluded its forty-third session by reaffirming the values of primary health care -– including universal access to services -- as the basis for strengthening health systems.

Despite their systematic marginalization over centuries, women formed the very foundation of the world’s economy and development, the Commission on Population and Development was told today as it debated how population and development issues contributed in turn to gender equality and women’s empowerment.