Meetings Coverage

In a bid to transform the historic 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into “living law”, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues closed its eighth session today by adopting a text that invited States to adopt or endorse the document, substantively inform the Forum about its implementation and effectiveness, and recommended that they do the same in core reports to human rights treaty bodies and the Human Rights Council’s universal periodic review.

Strongly urging the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders to increase the momentum in the United Nations-backed talks aimed at reunifying the divided island nation, the Security Council today extended through mid-December the world body’s long-running peacekeeping operation in Cyprus.

The Security Council this afternoon welcomed the announcement of a time frame for long-postponed presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, endorsed by all political actors and leading to a first round of voting on 29 November 2009.

The semi-slavery of the Guarani and other indigenous peoples of the Chaco region must swiftly end, with their grievances redressed and land rights restored, members of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues told delegates today, revealing findings from their mission to Paraguay and Bolivia.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the financing of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which is projected to require $646.58 million for its maintenance in the upcoming financial year, beginning 1 July.

Security Council diplomats today reported to the 15-nation body on their just-concluded eight-day mission to Africa, which included stops in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where they met with senior African Union officials, as well as Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina continued to make progress toward “a peaceful, viable State, irreversibly on course for our European integration”, but was hampered in that effort by divisive partisan rhetoric, Valentin Inzko, High Representative for the Balkan country told the Security Council today.

With the conclusion of its resumed 2009 session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations recommended that the Economic and Social Council grant consultative status to 36 bodies and reclassify one group, and took note of 111 quadrennial reports.

All of humanity must work together to re-establish harmony and unity with the natural environment by implementing the Kyoto Protocol and creating a global governance system that respected and supported vegetable, mineral, animal, human and cosmic life, Nicolas Lucas Ticum, a Maya priest from Guatemala and a researcher on the Calendario Maya, told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, as it continued its eighth session.

The “diversity of poverty” should be recognized in efforts to meet the needs of indigenous people, whose distinctiveness should be also used as an asset to catalyse their economic development, Jean-Philippe Audinet, Director of the Policy Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today as delegates continued their in-depth dialogue with United Nations agencies.