Taking stock of progress and future challenges, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues closed its sixteenth session today with a batch of strong recommendations for improving the lives of indigenous peoples, and the message, “nothing about us without us”.
Without respect and recognition for traditional environmental practices and land rights, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would fail to achieve its full potential to protect the Earth and all its inhabitants, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on the penultimate day of its sixteenth session.
Extractive industries and energy projects continued to broach ancestral lands, threatening their environmental health and the people living on them, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today.
Seeking informed consent from indigenous peoples before undertaking projects affecting their territories and resources was crucial to their survival and human rights, participants told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today.
The very survival of indigenous peoples depended on States taking swift action to rapidly recognize and respect all human rights, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today, concluding the first week of its sixteenth session.
The empowerment of indigenous women as powerful agents of change could only strengthen their communities and nations in the face of environmental and other challenges, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today.
Calls demanding respect for traditional lands, resources, knowledge and cultures rang through the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, with participants from the North Pole to New Zealand pressing Governments to move beyond “paper promises” and uphold their rights.
Fearing a rollback of achievements in implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, speakers appealed to Governments to uphold commitments protecting the rights of all indigenous peoples and prevent a reversal of hard-won gains, as the sixteenth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues continued today.
While progress had been made on a range of pressing challenges amid the world’s embrace of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, far more must be done to ensure that indigenous peoples were not left behind, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today, during the opening of its sixteenth session.
More than 1,000 indigenous participants from all over the world will be at United Nations Headquarters from 24 April to 5 May to attend the sixteenth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
