Geneva, 18 July 2005
By UNPO Secretariat Team

The sixth annual session of the Workshop on Indigenous Children and Adolescents took place at the World Council of Churches featuring human rights and legal officers from UN specialized agencies. The presentations focused on recent developments and projects conducted by UN specialized agencies in partnership with indigenous peoples on important and imminent issues.

Alma Jenkins, UNICEF, spoke about the recent meeting hosted by UNICEF in Madrid last week featuring 17 different Spanish speaking countries with 34 indigenous children and youth. The meeting allowed for the indigenous delegates to prepare their own statements and strategy plans. The presentation focused on the efforts by UNICEF and challenges facing indigenous children in education and schools as well larger issues due to colonization and confiscation of land.

One of the main challenges is the invisibility of indigenous children.

UNICEF also explain the rights based approach is how they have been programming more and more making people aware of their rights so they can claim their rights and making state more and more aware of the role that rights of citizens must be fulfilled.

At the UNICEF conference, youth noted, “We want to voice our needs, concerns and visions.” It was done for the first time because usually children and adolescents do not have a voice to be seen and not heard. UNICEF created the space for the indigenous voice and the Declaration of Indigenous Children and Adolescents of Latin America to Ibero-american Summit 2005 will be available on the website in upcoming weeks.

“It is so remarkable how much UNICEF has done… It is breathtaking to see it all grow”, Cynthia Price Cohen said.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also addressed steps being taken and shared positive comments about the UNICEF conference. Julian Burger shared the progress of the Indigenous Fellows program at the HCHR. A handful of indigenous fellows participated in the two day program from the English and Spanish group.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child also addressed the workshop describing the work by the CRC over the year. There was a review of the general day of discussion that focused on indigenous children based on a recommendation by the Indigenous Children and Adolescent workshop as well as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The day serves as a specific tool providing guidelines to governments, civil society groups and NGOs to improve the rights of indigenous children. It also reaffirmed the commitment to indigenous day. They will also decide to create a general comment that is a guide to start parties under the convention for indigenous children.

As the CRC representative noted, “We are setting up the parameters. There is room for suggestions. We should be able to adopt in the last session of September 2006.”

CRC is also strong on getting active feedback especially civil society groups. Through the NGO group they set up email group or key partners to get feedback on initial draft. This forum can provide feedback and assist.

The NGO Group also participated and described the new creation of a subgroup focusing on indigenous children spearheaded by Anna Pinto of CORE. Denise Allen from the NGO Group described the role of civil society to assist the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Anna Pinto described the possibilities for active participation in the subgroup and the ability to influence decision-making at CRC.

Joshua Cooper of the Hawaii Institute for Human Rights reviewed the fourth annual session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Cooper noted the call for training and capacity building made by the Youth Caucus at the annual meeting.

The International Labor Organization spoke about the work conditions facing indigenous children and also the convention mechanisms that can assist indigenous peoples to uphold fundamental freedoms.

The final presentation was by Cynthia Price Cohen describing the creation of the CRC and the possibilities for NGOs to shape international law and to protect and promote human rights.

The second part of the Workshop on Indigenous Children and Youth broke into two groups focusing on Traditional Knowledge and also Demilitarization. The groups drafted papers to be presented to the upcoming 23rd session of the UN WGIP.