Africa/Global: UN should protect indigenous women's rights

The United Nations (UN) should do more to protect indigenous women throughout the world from multiple layers of discrimination. This was the sentiment aired by indigenous women from different countries during the Third Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which took place at the UN headquarters in New York, USA last 10-21 May 2004. The theme of this year's mission was "indigenous women," with indigenous defined by the UN as communities, peoples and nations which have a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, and thus indigenous people consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them.