A/HRC/48/74 Annex Advice No. 14 on the rights of the indigenous child under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 1. States should increase and ensure the enjoyment by indigenous children of their individual and collective rights, including by ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its optional protocols, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) and other key human rights treaties, and signing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. States should incorporate those instruments into national law including through national implementation plans, with the participation of, and in consultation with, indigenous peoples, including children. 2. States and indigenous peoples should ensure the meaningful participation and consultation of indigenous children in decision-making processes and use the Declaration and the best interests of the child as a framework for all decisions that may impact them. 3. Indigenous peoples, with the support of States, should invest in the leadership of women and girls in indigenous communities, particularly in decision-making structures. 4. States should ratify and implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, including through concrete actions to mitigate the effects of climate change, with the aim of fostering the highest attainable standard of health for indigenous children and their right to a healthy environment. 5. States and indigenous peoples should make all efforts to protect the medicinal plants, animals and minerals necessary for the health of indigenous peoples and protect their traditional territories to ensure both present and future enjoyment of the rights of indigenous children, including through their symbiotic relationship with their lands, territories and resources. 6. States should take measures to ensure free and equitable access to social services for all indigenous children, paying particular attention to the rights and special needs of girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and two-spirit children, children with disabilities and those in remote or nomadic settlements and urban settings, and take measures to address discrimination against them, including through public information campaigns. 7. States should take measures to improve birth registration processes and remove registration as a precondition for accessing health-care services. 8. States should take measures to support indigenous families, including urban and homeless indigenous children, ensuring minimum standards, such as heating, electricity, water and sanitation, are met. 9. States should support and provide, to the best of their ability, indigenous and community-led childcare systems. 10. States should take concrete measures to reduce the overrepresentation of indigenous children in alternative care and justice systems, and provide training on the rights and cultures of indigenous children for relevant actors, including law enforcement and prison officials, judges and social workers. They should also provide adequate support, including psychosocial support, for those who have been removed from their communities and/or are in State institutions. 11. States should ensure the meaningful participation and consultation of indigenous peoples, including children, in all child welfare and adoption systems, with the aim of establishing indigenous-led child welfare systems for indigenous children. 12. States should take steps to redress intergenerational trauma and the impact of removing children from their communities, and take immediate measures to reduce and aim to eradicate the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities, and to reunite all families separated by migration. 18