Indigenous representatives to meet at UN next week on pressing challenges

More than 1,200 representatives of the world’s indigenous people kick off a 12-day meeting at the United Nations on Monday, naming education, health, human rights and the environment as among the major challenges they face in trying to improve their situation by the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The fifth session of the 16-member Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, an independent expert group, will give hundreds of indigenous advocates a platform to voice concerns, recommend solutions and deliberate with Governments and the intergovernmental system on behalf of an estimated 370 million people in 70 countries, according to the Forum’s secretariat.

“While they are from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds, they share common difficulties: lack of basic health care, limited access to education, loss of control over land, abject poverty, displacement, human rights violations, and economic and social marginalization,” it said in a news release.

The opening ceremony will launch the Programme of Action for the Second International Decade of World’s Indigenous People, whose end overlaps with the MDG deadline in 2015.

An increasing concern is the absence of information on HIV/ AIDS in indigenous communities and this will be prioritized at the 15 to 26 May session, the Forum said.

“The timing of this meeting is very important, especially as Governments strengthen efforts concerning the Millennium Development Goals. The upcoming session will demand the need for inclusion of indigenous peoples in all evaluation and stricter monitoring processes on the progress on the Millennium Development Goals,” said Elissavet Stamatopoulou, Chief of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The meeting will also highlight inclusion of traditional knowledge and full participation of indigenous peoples in decisions that impact their lives, based on the principle of free, prior and informed consent.

Efforts to raise indigenous issues at an international, intergovernmental level started in 1923, according to the news release. Chief Deskaheh of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, comprising the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora Nations, went to try to speak to the League of Nations in Geneva in defence of his people’s right to live on their land, under their own laws and faith, the secretariat said. The following year New Zealand Maori Leader Ratana made a similar journey to Geneva to plead the cause of his people.

Although neither one was allowed to speak to the League of Nations, their vision inspired the generations that followed, the Forum secretariat said.