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E/C.19/2012/13
traditional knowledge, genetic resources and traditional cultural expressions, and to
provide comments thereon to the Intergovernmental Committee through the Forum.
The review should be undertaken within the framework of indigenous human rights.
51. The Permanent Forum calls upon States to organize regional and national
consultations to enable indigenous peoples to prepare for and participate effectively
in sessions of the Intergovernmental Committee.
52. Consistent with article 18 of the Declaration, the Permanent Forum requests
Member States to explore and establish modalities to ensure the equal, full and direct
participation of indigenous peoples in all negotiations of the Intergovernmental
Committee.
53. As highlighted in article 31 of the Declaration, the Permanent Forum requests
that both WIPO and States take effective measures and establish mechanisms to
recognize the right of indigenous peoples to protect their intellectual property,
including their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural
expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and
cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of
the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and
traditional games, and visual and performing arts.
54. The Permanent Forum calls upon WIPO to strengthen its efforts to reach out to
indigenous peoples and to continue to provide practical assistance and capacitystrengthening for and in cooperation with indigenous peoples.
55. The Permanent Forum calls upon the Intergovernmental Committee to appoint
representatives of indigenous peoples as members of any Friends of the Chair
groups and as co-chairs of any working groups and drafting groups that may be
established by the Committee. It also calls upon the Committee to appoint an
indigenous person as a co-chair of the Committee as a whole.
Half-day discussion on the rights of indigenous peoples to food and
food sovereignty
56. The Permanent Forum notes that indigenous peoples’ right to food and food
sovereignty is inextricably linked with the collective recognition of rights to land
and territories and resources, culture, values and social organization. Subsistence
activities such as hunting, fishing, traditional herding, shifting cultivation and
gathering are essential not only to the right to food, but to nurturing their cultures,
languages, social life and identity. The right to food depends on access to and
control over their lands and other natural resources in their territories. The Forum
notes that displacement, resource development such as mining, monoculture, natural
disasters and other activities have an impact on food sovereignty; article 10 of the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is relevant to food
sovereignty because, without indigenous peoples’ access to forests, oceans, rivers,
lakes and lands for cultivation and food source sustainability, food sovereignty is
impossible to achieve. The levels of hunger and malnutrition among indigenous
peoples are often disproportionately higher than among the non-indigenous
population yet they often do not benefit from programmes designed to fight hunger
and malnutrition or to promote development.
57. The Permanent Forum welcomes the legal reforms and policies carried out in
some States to recognize the right of indigenous peoples to food and food
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