Indigenous Women’s Voices at High Level

Developing a Collective Voice

The Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), in collaboration with the Asia Indigenous Women Network (AIWN), the Bai Indigenous Women’s Network, Philippines, the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (FIMI), the MADRE, the National Indigenous Women’s Federation (NIWF), the Nepal, OHCHR Regional Office for South-East Asia, and the PEREMPUAN AMAN, Indonesia organised a formal virtual side event on ‘Indigenous Women in COVID-19 to SDGs achievement: Frontline Heroes’ New Normal with accelerated collective actions’ during the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development on Wednesday, 8 July 2020. This collective statement is the voices of indigenous women as drawn based on this side event. Read the full collective statement of indigenous women on HLPF 2020. The responses of the participants to the questions asked can also be found here

The HLPF typically happens in New York at the United Nations headquarters but as you might have guessed, everything was done online. You can watch an archive of the side-event on YouTube.

AIPP is a global influencing grantee based in Chiang Mai, Thailand working on a regional project to get more indigenous women’s voices involved in local SDG processes. Zack Lee, Voice’s Regional Roving Grants Officer for Asia caught up with Sushila Thapa Magar, AIPP’s Indigenous Women Coordinator to find out more about this exciting experience.

In a podcast, Zack finds out from Sushila what it was like to coordinate the side-event, how AIPP managed to develop their statement, which contains numerous voices across multiple countries and the importance of accessing international fora like the HLPF for indigenous women.

Listen to the full conversation here. The transcript can also be found here, edited for clarity and length.