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On 30 November, the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues together with UNDP Regional Office organized a briefing on the newly developed System-wide action plan to ensure a coherent approach to achieving the ends of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The briefing took place at the UNDP Asia regional hub in Bangkok, Thailand and involved colleagues from national and regional UN offices. The briefing was aimed at providing background information and details on the action plan which had just been discussed by the Secretary-General and other heads of UN agencies, programmes and funds two weeks earlier at the meeting of the Chief Executive Board of the United Nations.
The SWAP was requested by Member States at the 2014 World Conference on Indigenous Peoples and it contains a number of concrete actions that the UN system as a whole is committed to taking, to promote the well being and rights of Indigenous Peoples. The action plan was developed by the UN system over a ten month period in consultation with Indigenous Peoples and Member States and it will be presented at the forthcoming session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on 9 May 2016.
After the briefing, the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues together with the Technical Cooperation Unit of DESA, facilitated a 2-days workshop for representatives from government and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Issues and ways to facilitate it’s implementation at national level.
