Indigenous groups for change in UN working methods

As representatives of UN agencies and funds highlighted their respective strategies to address indigenous peoples' concerns, the representatives of indigenous peoples yesterday urged the United Nations to change its working methods so that they remain the driving force behind -- and not merely the object of -- those efforts.
In the day-long dialogue during the eighth session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, officials from various UN agencies discussed their approaches and challenges to incorporate the goals of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Development Group's Guidelines on Indigenous Peoples' Issues into policies and programmes, and to convince key government partners to do the same, according to a release of UN Economic and Social Council received in Dhaka.
UNDP's Associate Administrator Ad Melkert said that indigenous peoples, too often, lacked a say in environment and energy policy-making, weakening the impact of government programmes to conserve and sustainable use the planet's vast natural resources.
But UNDP was committed to reversing that trend through adaptation to climate change initiatives, supporting up to 200 climate change risk management projects in 10 countries and helping the Equator Initiative raise the profile of more than 1,400 community-based natural resource management projects, he said.
UNDP had also partnered with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to boost the number of indigenous peoples' holding seats in parliaments worldwide, he added.
Eve Crowley, deputy director of the FAO's Gender Equity and Rural Employment Division, said her agency was working to alleviate hunger and poverty among indigenous people, improve their access to food and help forest dwellers under threat of dispossession keep their land.
"Indigenous peoples comprised one-seventh of the world's rural poor. Creating a unit in FAO specifically for their needs, as some Forum members suggested, was a good idea."
Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a Forum member from the United States, said the FAO report submitted to the Forum gave the impression that indigenous people were presented more as beneficiaries and subjects of studies. It was unclear how the agency interacted with them as partners or active agents of cooperation.
FAO's projects were small-scale, and therefore had a limited impact, she said, expressing hope that the agency had some avenues for addressing those challenges.
Elisa Canqui Mollo, a Forum member from Bolivia, stressed the importance of indigenous peoples' true participation in FAO's food security efforts and the agency's funding of projects.
Turning to the issue of indigenous peoples' human rights, Antti Korkearvi, Coordinator of UNHCHR's Minority and Indigenous Peoples Unit, said the UNHCHR was using the Declaration as the key tool to protect those rights, and it had increased funding for numerous country-specific programmes that benefited indigenous people.
"There was no room for complacency as rights of indigenous peoples were being violated around the world. UNHCHR was developing guidelines and brochures, and, through its regional and country presences, conducting hands-on training to United Nations staff, notably in Asia and Latin America, as well as an indigenous fellowship programme."
Forum members from the Philippines, Bolivia, Spain, Uganda, Norway, Morocco and Congo also spoke.