Indigenous leaders present at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues meets in New York recognized the spaces that have been offered to discuss the Millennium Development Goals and the goals to be replaced after 2015, and requested that no discrimination is a cornerstone of what is agreed at government level to the next global development agenda. *Click here to read original Article in Spanish
Representatives of indigenous organizations, governments and multilateral agencies called in New York that indigenous peoples are not only part of the extensive consultations that are taking place globally to build the new global agenda for after 2015, concluding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but their different approaches to the world, of the relationship between humans and their environment are taken into account when discussing the upcoming global objectives
“We have different views on what is poverty, vulnerability. We do not say that we are poor but we were poor, “said Luis Fernando Arias, President of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), during the event entitled” The agenda post-2015 and the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: Participation in the regional consultations of Guadalajara and other perspectives “, organized today by the Mission of Mexico to the UN, the Fund for the achievement of the MDGs (MDG-F), the Interagency Group on Indigenous Peoples Development Group UN in Latin America and Secretariat unique United Nations Agenda Post-2015. The main objective of this meeting was to resume the recommendations made by indigenous representatives in a regional consultation convened by Mexico in the city of Guadalajara last April to feed the wider discussion on the indigenous perspective of the current process called Post2015.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been generally positive in addressing the most pressing needs of the poorest populations in the world, experts agreed, but in the case of indigenous peoples the progress remain lower than in other groups and the challenge for them is to require that greater efforts are completed to meet these objectives while participating in discussions and post negotiations for the agenda Post-MDGs. “The agenda post-2015 must have zero discrimination as a fundamental objective,” said Myrna Cunningham, an expert of the Permanent Forum, who recalled that indigenous peoples also want universal standards “but having goals tailored to the nations and their communities.”
Myrna Cunningham also stressed the need for a paradigm shift in development, including the concept of “good living”, greater emphasis on sustainability and the intergenerational responsibility. We must address the structural causes for not limiting to “cosmetic attention,” said Cunningham. And in that model change, indigenous peoples should be subjects of rights assets.
For his part, Luis Fernando Arias evoked an exercise carried out in Colombia to build what was “the other view” of the MDGs through a national process that explicitly incorporates such important elements as the territory, self-determination, the prior free and informed. This work could be a reference point for discussion of indigenous peoples in the context of global processes.
During the opening ceremony, the different institutions that are jointly unveiled their proposals to continue accompanying the discussion indigenous on Post 2015. While Mexico announced the organization of a regional event in preparation for the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014, the MDG-F said that 30% of the funds disbursed by the fund to support the achievement of the MDGs globally was dedicated to projects benefiting indigenous peoples and the UN presented the major stages of the process Post2015.
Besides Luis Fernando Arias and Myrna Cunningham, participated in the event Bruno Moro, Director of the Fund of the MDGs, Rene Mauricio Valdes, Chief of Staff of the Secretariat only UN Agenda Post-2015, Tania Pariona young Quechua of Peru and Miguel Díaz Reynoso, CEO of Liaison with International Organizations of Civil Society of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico. The main recommendations of this event and of the consultation of Guadalajara will be presented at the special session of the plenary of the Forum Standing devoted to Post2015 on 29 May in New York.
