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Resilient Voices: Empowering Indigenous Women Parliamentarians
With the objectives to build solidarity, enhance awareness and advocate for the rights of Indigenous women and girls, ninety-three Indigenous Women (IW) Members of Parliaments (MPs) from the House of Representatives, National Assembly and Seven Provincial Constituencies participated in the National Conference on Indigenous Women’s Rights and Leadership at Policy Level from 12-13 July 2023 in Kathmandu. The conference hosted discussions centred around the status of Indigenous Women and Girls in Nepal concerning indigenous language, climate change, and biodiversity conservation.
The key topics of discussion during the conference included the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (UNCEDAW), the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDIP), United Nations Convention Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) and Indigenous Languages.
Indigenous Women have an abundance of knowledge and skills but do not often have the opportunity to apply them.
The inclusive and participatory nature of the session created a safe and open space to bring intersectoral narratives and perspectives to review policy and implementation gaps in law and policies, national and international human rights documents that the Nepal government is a signatory to and also identified remedial actions to address those gaps. Conversations were nuanced, and intersectional in terms of geography, caste and ethnic community and identity, language and experience sharing and other social-economical complexities.
Some of the key recommendations include:
- Establishing a mandatory national regulatory framework and entities of customary systems led Indigenous Peoples (IPs);
- Establishing institutional mechanisms for IPs plan of action on traditional knowledge and implement Global Biodiversity Frameworks ensuring harmony towards nature;
- The rights of Indigenous Women to be considered within priority settings when embedding biodiversity-related acts in local, provincial, central and global levels.
The discussions led to a collective Statement of Commitment made by the participants’ IW leaders which is meant to lead the advocacy in policy making level and lobby for ensuring rights of indigenous women and IPs. The statement of commitment is also a tool for their accountability and foundation for further follow up of the conference that NIWF as organizer, other indigenous rights advocates and indigenous women’s movement can refer to in future.
The commitment paper was released during the closing ceremony of the conference in the presence of the Honorable Vice President of Nepal (Mr Rama Sahaya Yadav).
The conference was organized by the National Indigenous Women Forum (NIWF) in partnership with Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI), TEWA, UN Women, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), MADRE and the Government of Canada.
