We, Indigenous women from the seven sociocultural regions of the world, met at the World Conference of Indigenous Women - ‘Progress and challenges regarding the future we want’ in Lima, Peru, from October 28-30, 2013. Our gathering included elders and youth, urban and rural, knowledge holders and healers, activitists and artists. We were honoured by the participation of our allies and supporters, including UN agencies, donors, governments and organizations in solidarity. We shared our stories, struggles, victories, challenges and proposals to move us forward building upon what we have already achieved.

We based our discussions on the contributions of those women who came before us, as well as our aspirations for future generations. We celebrated the strength, beauty and expertise of indigenous women at this gathering and around the world.

Indigenous Women assert our right to self-determination, which encompasses the direct, full and effective participation of Indigenous peoples, including the vital role of Indigenous women, in all matters related to our human rights, political status, and well-being. We endorse the principle: “Nothing about us, without us", and further declare "Everything about us, with us.”

Indigenous Women affirm our responsibility to protect the Earth, our Mother. Indigenous women experience the same pain and impacts from the physical abuse and excessive exploitation of the natural world, of which we are an integral part. We will defend our lands, waters, territories and resources, which are the source of our survival, with our lives. Protection of Mother Earth is an historic, sacred and continuing responsibility of the world’s indigenous peoples, as the ancestral guardians of the Earth’s lands, waters, oceans, ice, mountains and forests. These have sustained our distinct cultures, spirituality, traditional economies, social structures, institutions, and political relations from time immemorial. Indigenous women play a primary role in safeguarding and sustaining Mother Earth and her cycles.

Today, at this time of compounded crises of climate change and impending irreversible loss of biological diversity, Indigenous Women underscore the duty of States to protect the territories of Indigenous Peoples, as critical areas for the social, cultural and ecological recovery and resilience of humankind and the natural world.

For Indigenous Peoples, our lands and territories comprise not only the geographical and physical areas of our lands, waters, oceans, ice, mountains and forests, but also the profound cultural, social and spiritual relationships, values and responsibilities, that connect us to our ancestral homelands.

Indigenous Peoples’ sovereign jurisdiction over our lands, territories and resources is the foundation of our rights to self-determination, self-governance and free, prior and informed consent. State violations and failure to uphold these rights are a primary source of conflicts and overlapping claims by extractive industries, forest concessions, energy programmes, and other harmful projects arising from a failed and exploitative model of economic growth and development.

Indigenous women call upon states to recognize and respect our rights to lands, territories and resources as enshrined in Indigenous customary law, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and other international human rights instruments. This includes our right to freely pursue our own economic, social, and cultural development.

There is an urgent need to implement the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous women are active human rights defenders of all individual and collective human rights of our Peoples. We often bear the burden of social and environmental harms arising from the consistent denial and violation of our human rights and the lack of implementation and accountability of States.

Indigenous women and girls experience multiple forms of discrimination, lack of access to education and health care, high rates of poverty, maternal and child mortality. We are subject to all forms of violence, such as domestic violence and sexual abuse, including in the contexts of trafficking, armed conflict, environmental violence, and extractive industries.

As Indigenous women, we recognize the importance of sexual and reproductive health and education for all ages. This includes our associated rights to culturally appropriate health and education services in our communities, and the right to exercise, maintain, and control our own health knowledge and practices. We call for zero tolerance for all forms of discrimination, and all forms of violence against Indigenous Women and girls, which are among the worst and most pervasive forms of human rights violations perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples.

Finally, we affirm that Indigenous women have knowledge, wisdom, and practical experience, which has sustained human societies over generations. We, as mothers, life givers, culture bearers, and economic providers, nurture the linkages across generations and are the active sources of continuity and positive change.

In regard to forthcoming global events,

We call upon the WCIP to include the proposals in the Alta Outcome Document for the establishment of effective mechanisms to hold States accountable to their human rights and other obligations.

We call upon the WCIP to prioritise the issues and concerns of Indigenous Women in all the themes, organizational arrangements, outcome documents, and to ensure the full and effective participation of indigenous women, including elders and youth.

We call upon States, the UN system, and all relevant actors to ensure the effective implementation of the Plan of Action and Recommendations arising from the World Conference of Indigenous Women, including through the provision of sufficient finantial resources and other support within the frameworks and processes of Beijing+20, Cairo+20 and the Post 2015 Development Agenda.

We thank our hosts, the Indigenous Peoples and the Government of Perú, in particular CHIRAPAQ, Centro de Culturas Indígenas de Perú, and the International Indigenous Women’s Forum, Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas, Asia Indigenous Peoples’ Pact, Indigenous Women Africa, Alianza de Mujeres Indígenas de Centroamerica y México, Asian Indigenous Women’s Network, Pacific Indigenous Women’s Network, and Indigenous Information Network. Together, we will continue our movement forward.

They demand that the States recognize the authority and competency of their communities in the handling of their lands, territories, and resources.

They pledge to be part of the solution to the food crisis that will consequently result in climate change.

Unanimously, the indigenous women of the world declared that if States did not restore the control that the women had over their land, territories, and resources, it would not only put the communities’ lives in danger, but all of humanity as well.

Through the “Lima Declaration,” endorsed by almost 200 female leaders from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia, Latin America, North America, and Russia, they declared that their role in the preservation of biodiversity and ancestral wisdom of nature is a key piece in order to challenge the impacts of climate change.

“In this moment of serious crisis and impending, irreversible loss of biological diversity, indigenous women emphasize the obligation of the States to protect the territories of indigenous communities,” they demanded.

The declaration, released today, was prepared in the framework of the World Conference of Indigenous Women that met in Lima, Peru, attended by indigenous women from around the globe.

Resources like water, energy, and biodiversity, that contain fundamental economic and strategic value for countries, are located primarily in indigenous territories. This represents a risk for the lives of the communities, especially indigenous women.

A recent study produced by CEPAL shows that in Latin American the growth of mining, forestry, and other industries has resulted in the displacement of millions of indigenous women from their ancestral territories to urban areas.

Nevertheless, this does not mean a change in their life conditions. On the contrary, they already make up part of the most vulnerable populations, having been exposed to various forms of violence such as racism, exploitation of labor, and sexual trafficking.

“Indigenous women experience, in relation to our land, the same pain and effects caused by physical abuse and excessive exploitation,” they asserted in this declaration. Moreover, they warned that they are prepared to defend their communities’ lands, water, and resources with their lives.

The leaders demanded that the states recognize the authority and competency that indigenous communities hold over their lands, territories, and resources. They demanded that all development projects that affect their lives should be made with free, prior, and informed consent of their communities.

Moreover, they indicated that any policy or social program about health, education, or any that focuses on the well being of indigenous women should be carried out with their direct, full, and effective participation. “Nothing about us, without us. Everything about us, with us,” is the protest they adopt in this declaration.

This document, coupled with a plan of action, will be presented in different moments and mechanisms of the United Nations systems focused on the right of women and indigenous communities. The World Conference of Indigenous Communities will be held in 2014 in New York City.

At said conference, they will ask to guarantee the full and effective participation of indigenous women, above all the wise elderly and the young, and that the results of the findings prioritize the concerns of indigenous women.

Source: http://en.mujerindigena.com/indigenous-women-of-the-world-warn-that-they-will-give-their-lives-to-defend-their-lands/

Indigenous women around the world suffer from various forms of violence, from child marriage and domestic violence to loss of the land that sustains them and their families, according to participants at the World Conference of Indigenous Women held October 28 to 30 in Lima, Peru.

“We speak with the same voice. We have the same problems across the world,” said Agnes Leina, executive director of Il'laramatak Community Concerns, which works to empower girls and women in traditional herder communities in Kenya.

As corporations move in to build roads, open mines and obtain rights to water sources, especially in northern Kenya, “We are being pushed from our land, and the people most affected are the women and children,” she told reporters on the last day of the conference.

Indigenous women also have less access to health care and education, she said. Women often must walk miles to the nearest health center. Those who are seriously ill may die along the way, and pregnant women sometimes give birth before they reach a health-care facility, she said.

Women in those communities “are largely illiterate, so the cycle of poverty goes round and round,” she said.

In Latin America, which is home to more than 23 million indigenous women of more than 670 peoples, maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy rates are higher among indigenous than non-indigenous women, according to a new study published by the U.N. Economic Council for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The region has made some progress in education, with more indigenous girls completing primary school, but far fewer girls than boys continue to high school or beyond, said Fabiana del Popolo of ECLAC.

“We indigenous women want to stop being invisible and become visible,” said Tarcila Rivera Zea, a Quechua woman from Peru who heads Chirapaq, an indigenous advocacy organization that helped organize the Lima event. Using data from national censuses, as the Latin America study did, women can propose policy changes to benefit themselves and their families, she said.

Some women seek change within their own communities. Elsa Cárdenas, a Quechua woman from the southern Peruvian highlands, called for a change in her community’s rules that would give women voice and vote in assemblies, which are currently open only to men, single women and widows.

In other cases, problems must be tackled on a global scale.

Canada’s northernmost reaches are suffering “extreme impacts” from global climate change, said Ruth Massie, grand chief of the Council of First Yukon Nations.

“We see the effects in our animals, birds and plants,” she said. “Migration routes of our animals have changed, our birds are fewer, our plants are affected by pollutants in the water, which we never had before.”

Those changes add to the toll on health, as people’s diets shift more toward processed foods, she said.

Despite the shared problems, there are hopeful signs in some countries. Myrna Cunningham, of the Center for Autonomy and Development of Indigenous Peoples (CADPI) in Nicaragua, said that 30 percent of her country’s land is now recognized as indigenous territory, although some communities still struggle to gain control over their territory.

That, she said, is a sign that “things can change, and women have a key role to play in that change.”

At the event, which was designed as a lead-up to the 2014 U.N. World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, director of Tebtebba, an indigenous policy and education organization in the Philippines, urged a greater decision-making role for indigenous women.

“We are the ones who carry the burdens of making our families survive and sustaining the ecosystem,” she said. “Our message to the United Nations, governments and corporations is that they should work with us and not against us, because we have solutions to many of the environmental, social, economic and cultural crises that (the world faces) today.”

Source: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/02/world-conference-indigenous-women-urges-speaking-same-voice-152039

Over two hundred women from Africa, the Arctic, Asia, Latin America, North America, the Pacific, and Russia are gathering in Lima, Peru from October 28th to 30th during the World Conference of Indigenous Women. They are demand the greater prominence of Indigenous women at every level of decision-making and calling upon governments to dedicate funding to attend to the specific needs of Indigenous women.  

Source: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/indigenous-women-gather-world-conference-indigneous-women-lima-peru