Protecting Native Women

The Commission on the Status of Women, when it addresses “empowerment of indigenous women” as a focus area at its sixty-first session in 2017, should ensure that both the selection of panelists for the discussion and the preparation of issue papers by the Secretariat are done in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, including indigenous women’s organizations and women. The discussion of empowerment of indigenous women should result in concrete recommendations for actions by the UN and member states, and the Commission should incorporate those recommendations into its Agreed Conclusions for the sixty-first session or into a resolution on the empowerment of indigenous women.

The Human Rights Council should request, in order to ensure usable outcomes from the half-day panel on violence against indigenous women and girls,10 that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights present to the Council at its thirty-fourth session a written summary report on the discussion with recommendations for concrete measures to address violence against indigenous women and girls. We further recommend that the Council invite the Secretary-General to issue a separate report with concrete recommendations for action to prevent and eliminate violence against indigenous women and girls, with a view toward enhancing the Council's special procedures to respond to this cross-cutting issue. Because the Council’s special procedures are best suited to devote sustained collaborative study and reporting to respond to this topic, the Council should request regular joint reports from relevant special procedures on the issue, perhaps on a regional basis.11 The Council also should ask the Secretary-General to convene a high-level panel on intensifying efforts, in cooperation with indigenous peoples, to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against indigenous women and girls, when the United Nations hosts its high-level event to mark the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to be held during the seventy-first session of the General Assembly in 2017.

Actions to combat violence against indigenous women.pdf

July 13-July 1, 2016 | Center calls on UN Human Rights Council to take action to end violence against indigenous women

Sept. 15, 2015|Center requests UN action to combat violence against indigenous women

May 19, 2014 |Recommendations for Combating Violence Against Indigenous Women

May 19, 2014 |Joint Statement regarding Combating Violence Against Indigenous Women

Sept. 12, 2013| Jana Walker delivers a statement during the Human Rights Council's session on integration of a gender perspective