Hospitals & Asylums

4th Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues HA-27-5-05

1. The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is a is a high-level advisory body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) representing the 370 million indigenous people living in 70 countries that meets for 10 days out of every year since the first session in 2002 to deal with indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, environment, education, health and human rights. The fourth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues took place from 16 to 27 May 2005 at the United Nations Headquarters, in New York. This brief was submitted for the final day of the fourth session. The theme of the fourth session of the Forum is: “Millennium Development Goals and indigenous peoples”, with emphasis on Goal 1: “Eradicate extreme poverty and Hunger” and Goal 2: “Achieve universal primary education”.

2. Bearing in mind the common resolve to promote peace and prosperity in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, and recalling the functions and powers of the Council ECOSOC decided in resolution 2000/22 of 28 July 2000 to establish a permanent forum on indigenous issues. The Forum consists of sixteen members, eight members to be nominated by Governments and elected by the Council, and eight members to be appointed by the President of the Council taking into account the diversity and geographical distribution of the indigenous people of the world as well as the principles of transparency, representativity and equal opportunity for all indigenous people. The Forum is one of the expert bodies of the Council composed of members serving in their personal capacity. The Forum serves as an advisory body to ECOSOC with a mandate to discuss indigenous issues relating to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights. United Nations bodies and organs, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations in consultative status with the Council may participate in the work of the Forum as observers.

3. The General Assembly, in its resolution 48/163, proclaimed the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, to commence on 10 December 1994. The General Assembly invited indigenous organizations and other interested non-governmental organizations to consider what contributions they could make to the success of the Decade. The Programme of Activities for the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004) General Assembly resolution 50/157 of 21 December 1995 stated, Indigenous peoples inhabit large areas of the earth's surface. Indigenous or aboriginal peoples are so-called because they were living on their lands before settlers came from elsewhere; they are the descendants - according to one definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived, the new arrivals later becoming dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means. The Decade ended 10 December 2004 the day the Secretary General declared a panel reported, “the most sweeping reforms since the foundation of the United Nations” for the applause of the General Assembly.

4. The First Session of the Permanent Forum took place in New York from 13 to 24 May 2002 according to Supp. 23 Report E/2002/43/Rev.1 was attended by some 900 observers representing Governments, the United Nations system, indigenous peoples organizations and other non-governmental organizations. The Forum made recommendations on its six substantive mandated areas - economic and social development; culture; the environment; education; health; and human rights. The outcome of the First Session E/C.19/2003/3 reported that the secretariat of the Forum was established on 27 February 2003. The second session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues took place in the period April-May 2003 at United Nation Headquarters. The theme for the second session was Indigenous Children and Youth and the conference studied the physical and mental health of indigenous children as it is they who will ensure the survival growth and prosperity of the peoples from whom they come. The Third Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues took place from 10 to 21 May 20. The special theme of the third session was Indigenous Women. Given the special theme of the event, organizations were encouraged to include an enhanced presence of indigenous women in their delegations. As aforementioned the fourth session took place 16 to 27 May 2005. The theme was the Millennium Development Goals for Indigenous People.

5. How then shall we uphold the goals of the conference Goal 1: “Eradicate extreme poverty and Hunger” and Goal 2: “Achieve universal primary education”? Mandated Areas and ongoing priorities and themes E/C.19/2005/8 of 9 May 2005 calls for greater recognition of indigenous intellectual property rights, traditional forestry, medicines, agriculture and crafts by means of the review of papers on the relative poverty of people. To assist these people the Forum shall work with national and regional governments to facilitate the administration of international assistance to indigenous people so that they can fulfill the Millennium Development goals without suffering their traditional ways of life, languages and culture to be forgotten. The promotion and protection of rights over lands and resources of indigenous peoples are vital for the peoples' development and cultural survival. Furthermore, the importance of participation by indigenous peoples in decision-making processes was underlined. Medicinal knowledge and expertise in agricultural biodiversity and environmental management are great assets of the indigenous that must sell to the national and international governments in the form of employment. For indigenous peoples all over the world the protection of their cultural and intellectual property has taken on growing importance and urgency. The right to social security is the most rational method for achieving lasting relief under the Millennium Development Goals. Nations must ensure that their indigenous people are registered at birth and fully integrated into the tax and welfare system of the State. Indigenous people are entitled to equal rights. They live above or below the same poverty line as other people. When they become chronically unemployed, aged, disabled the State is obligated to support them with a pension that sustains them at least at 50% of the poverty line and in better times exactly at the national poverty line. The issues of extreme poverty and hunger are best solved with food security and agricultural self-sufficiency however when individual’s crops fail the community must take care of them and when a nation’s crops fail the international community must assist them. The problem presented by nations of hungry people is that they must represent themselves in a coherent fashion to the national and international community for donations of food and a distribution method must be organized. The entire economy must change from self sufficiency to trade. The question of primary education is also very critical. Indigenous communities must be supplied with schools, teachers, textbooks, blackboards, desks, computers and school supplies to guarantee their children access to at least a primary education. These people must be able to read, write and do mathematics so that they could participate in society and have the leisure for academic accomplishment at the public library where they should have access to computer and the Internet. Neither trade nor education interfere with indigenous rights and culture so long as people are being paid for the work they do and education in indigenous communities must teach the native language and culture to support the intellectual community of their tribe as well as contemporary national and international knowledge.

6. Special thanks to my friend Bill who walked to the park with me and spoke to his friend in Cherokee on the cell phone as we walked to White Castle to discover that the 24 hour restaurant had closed at 10:30pm, giving me the fortitude to write this study. On our journey we talked about whether white people can consider themselves indigenous or even tribal at all. We agreed that the Caucasian people living in the US indeed lacked anything that they could call a tribal culture as the result of the Americanization of so many different European tribes. In Europe however language and history create distinctive heritage that can be considered tribal by the people whose families have claimed a right to the land as indigenous agriculturally self-sufficient nations for millennium, however only a few conquered and poor people choose to identify themselves as indigenous tribes. He told me that of “indigenous rights” the right to land is supreme however native people are entitled to all human rights and also retain many rights particular to their people. He promised to write an essay on Cherokee history and government. Thank you for your interest in indigenous rights. We hope that ECOSOC will associate HA more with indigenous rights than nuclear non proliferation and come to realize the participation of the NGO in UN Conferences. General consultative status in 2006 would help HA to review the work of conferences in a more timely fashion.

Contributions should be addressed to: Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations, High Commissioner/Centre for Human Rights, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland.

(Draft) International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations 28 July 1994