PDF to attend the UN Seventh Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues April 28 & 29

The Peace Development Fund is please to announce its participation in the United Nations Seventh Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.  PDF is sending participants from our Capacity Building Program to present workshops on the impact of climate change on indigenous communities and the violation of religious freedoms of indigenous people currently incarcerated.   If you would like to attend these workshops please see below for additional information.

PDF is proud to have the Flying Eagle Woman Fund (www.flyingeaglewomanfund.org) and the Fundacion Rigoberta Menchu Tum as co-sponsors of the workshops.

Program Partners from PDF’s Criminal Justice Initiative will be presenting:

Religious Freedom Lockdown: Justice, Jails and Families

Monday, April 28, 2008

1:15 – 2:45 p.m.

Library Auditorium, UN Headquarters, New York, NY

Indigenous men and women in prisons across the US do not have the same religious freedoms as other inmates, or even respect for their cultural ways.  Indigenous human rights violations begin at home, where their worlds are falling apart, at the family or community level and ultimately on the personal level.  Ceremony is often the only realistic first step toward both surviving incarceration and returning to their community and family.

The Peace Development Fund’s Criminal Justice Initiative builds a place for these struggles in the global struggle for human rights, through the lens of Indigenous and other oppressed communities.

Program Partners from PDF’s Building Action for Sustainable Environments (BASE) Initiative will present:

Nuclear, Coal & Oil: Climate Change At Its Best

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

1:15 – 2:45 p.m.

Library Auditorium, UN Headquarters, New York, NY

The Peace Development Fund’s Building Action for Sustainable Environments (BASE) Initiative supports grassroots communities living on the front lines of environmental injustice and climate change.  While climate change looms large in the press, the destruction of Indigenous and other communities of color go on largely unnoticed.

Organizers from these communities will discuss climate change from their community’s perspective, exposing the environmental racism underlying climate change.

Attending a Workshop:  The workshops at the UN require a UN credential.  PDF is able to provide those interested in attending with the necessary UN credential.  If you are interested in attending please e-mail us at peace (peace @ peacefund.org) for additional information.

To support these projects or to make a general gift to PDF click on the “Give Now” button to make your gift on our secure server. 

Additional Information on the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues:

If you would like to read more about the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues please go to:

www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/index.html

For additional information on the Seventh Session of the UN Permanent Forums on Indigenous Issues please go to:

www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/session_seventh.html