UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues meets in NY

[emcguffie]

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is meeting this week and next (16-27 May) at UN Headquarters in New York. At this year's session, they are focusing on the Millennium Development Goal targets and indigenous peoples: how can they help? are they hurting?

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=14291&Cr=i...
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/hr4836.doc.htm
(background press release)

UN opens two-week forum on indigenous issues to consider ways forward

16 May 2005 – With indigenous peoples being the poorest and most marginalized in many countries, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette today said the failure of Member States to negotiate an acceptable declaration on their rights is one of the major challenges facing the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

“At the level of international law, Member States have still not adopted the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, despite many, many years of negotiation and advocacy,” Ms. Fréchette said as she opened the fourth session of the Permanent Forum

<snip>

The Working Group on Indigenous Populations, scheduled to meet in July, should be used to work out commentaries, guidelines and studies that could clarify concepts and principles, she said, and indigenous peoples should contribute to an understanding of the concept of poverty UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

“Is an indigenous community that has lost its ancestral lands lifted out of poverty because some of its members have found temporary work and get a wage? Is an indigenous community poor because there is little money circulating when its members can fish, hunt and farm and use local resources for housing and basic necessities?” she asked.

<snip>

A recent World Bank study of indigenous people in Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru concluded that poverty had intensified among the indigenous, Forum Chairperson Victoria Pauli-Corpuz of the Philippines said, even though the Governments had amended their constitutions to recognize their ethnic plurality and had ratified the relevant UN International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention.

“How do we use all the studies and research, Special Rapporteur reports, results of workshop seminars on rights to land and land tenure issues?” she asked, adding that the Permanent Forum might identify a role to play here.

ILO research had shown that Governments and donors were reluctant to disaggregate data in the search for operational strategies and in the effort to make indigenous economies visible, while the indigenous were often the victims of forced labour.

press release at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/hr4836.doc.htm