The first ever UN world conference on indigenous peoples is being held today and tomorrow in New York. Martin Lidegaard, the foreign minister, and Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s premier, will be present at the high-level summit to discuss issues facing Greenland’s Inuit population.
"I am very happy to participate in the first UN world conference on indigenous people,” Lidegaard said in a statement.
“I am particularly pleased to participate alongside Premier Hammond. Co-operation between Denmark and Greenland and wider Danish-Greenlandic relations create respect around the world."
Lidegaard and Hammond will participate this afternoon in a roundtable discussion on implementing the rights of indigenous people at a local and national level.
A living document
Hammond said she hoped that the conference would result in an “ambitious document” that calls for countries to report regularly on the rights of native peoples, establishes more effective monitoring mechanisms, and ultimately results in a better application of 2007’s UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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The Danish delegation sent a letter to the UN earlier in the week stating its hope the conference will result in “a living document with real impact, and that the conference is not an end-goal, but a stepping stone towards the better application of the rights of indigenous peoples”.
Denmark has supported the conference with over 1 million kroner.
The Danish delegation at the conference is tweeting regularly at: //twitter.com/Denmark_UN.
