Human rights

The third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened today amid calls to equally include disabled persons in community life, health and education systems, and to effectively fill planning and execution gaps in Government strategies that often fell short of addressing their needs, especially in times of conflict or natural disaster.

Stressing that prevailing development paradigms had often destroyed the political, economic and spiritual systems of indigenous peoples, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues closed its ninth session today adopting its draft report, which, among other things, urged the United Nations to support indigenous peoples’ efforts to formulate their own development models based on concepts “underpinned by indigenous cosmologies, philosophies, values, cultures and identities”.

While indigenous peoples made undeniable contributions to humanity’s cultural diversity, representatives of aboriginal and native groups appealed today for help from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, saying they still faced systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic power, forced ejection from their ancestral lands, and depredation from profit-hungry corporations bent on destroying their life-giving forests.

The “painful” history of State control over forests could be traced by following the heavily deforested footprints that colonizers had left on indigenous lands and territories, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was told today during a half-day discussion on indigenous peoples and forests.

The expert members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today turned their attention to the historical root of ongoing violations of indigenous peoples’ human rights, so-called “discovery doctrines”, which for centuries served as “legal” rationale for stealing land and dehumanizing aboriginal peoples, as well as justification for the establishment of boarding schools throughout North America to “civilize” Indian children.

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.