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Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the Indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the rights over their land (including native title), language, religion, and other elements of cultural heritage that are a part of their existence and identity as a people. This can be used as an expression for advocacy of social organizations, or form a part of the national law in establishing the relation between a government and the right of self-determination among its Indigenous people, or in international law as a protection against violation of Indigenous rights by actions of governments or groups of private interests.
Indigenous rights belong to those who, being indigenous peoples, are defined by being the original people of a land that has been conquered and colonized by outsiders. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Exactly who is a part of the indigenous peoples is disputed, but can broadly be understood in relation to colonialism. When we speak of indigenous peoples we speak of those pre-colonial societies that face a specific threat from this phenomenon of occupation, and the relation that these societies have with the colonial powers. The exact definition of who are the indigenous people, and the consequent state of rightsholders, varies. Being too inclusive is considered as bad as being non-inclusive. [4] [5]
In the context of modern indigenous people of European colonial powers,[ clarification needed ] the recognition of indigenous rights can be traced to at least the period of Renaissance. Along with the justification of colonialism with a higher purpose for both the colonists and colonized, some voices expressed concern over the way indigenous peoples were treated and the effect it had on their societies. [6] In the Spanish Empire, the crown established the General Indian Court in Mexico and in Peru, with jurisdiction over cases involving the indigenous and aimed at protecting Indians from ill-treatment. Indians' access to the court was enabled by a small tax which paid for legal aides. [7] [8]
The issue of indigenous rights is also associated with other levels of human struggle. Due to the close relationship between indigenous peoples' cultural and economic situations and their environmental settings, indigenous rights issues are linked with concerns over environmental change and sustainable development. [9] [10] [11] According to scientists and organizations like the Rainforest Foundation, the struggle for indigenous peoples is essential for solving the problem of reducing carbon emission, and approaching the threat on both cultural and biological diversity in general. [12] [13] [14]
The rights, claims and even identity of indigenous peoples are apprehended, acknowledged and observed quite differently from government to government. Various organizations exist with charters to in one way or another promote (or at least acknowledge) indigenous aspirations, and indigenous societies have often banded together to form bodies which jointly seek to further their communal interests.
There are several non-governmental civil society movements, networks, indigenous and non-indigenous organizations whose founding mission is to protect indigenous rights, including land rights. [15] These organizations, networks and groups underline that the problems that indigenous peoples are facing is the lack of recognition that they are entitled to live the way they choose, and lack of the right to their lands and territories. Their mission is to protect the rights of indigenous peoples without states imposing their ideas of "development". [16] These groups say that each indigenous culture is differentiated, rich of religious believe systems, way of life, sustenance and arts, and that the root of problem would be the interference with their way of living by state's disrespect to their rights, as well as the invasion of traditional lands by multinational corporations and small businesses for exploitation of natural resources. [17]
Indigenous peoples and their interests are represented in the United Nations primarily through the mechanisms of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. In April 2000 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution to establish the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) as an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council with a mandate to review indigenous issues.
In late December 2004, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2005–2014 to be the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. The main goal of the new decade will be to strengthen international cooperation around resolving the problems faced by indigenous peoples in areas such as culture, education, health, human rights, the environment, and social and economic development.
In September 2007, after a process of preparations, discussions and negotiations stretching back to 1982, the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The non-binding declaration outlines the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to identity, culture, language, employment, health, education and other issues. Four nations with significant indigenous populations voted against the declaration: the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. All four have since then changed their vote in favour. Eleven nations abstained: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, Samoa and Ukraine. Thirty-four nations did not vote, while the remaining 143 nations voted for it.
ILO 169 is a convention of the International Labour Organization. Once ratified by a state, it is meant to work as a law protecting tribal people's rights. There are twenty-two physical survival and integrity, but also the preservation of their land, language and religion rights. The ILO represents indigenous rights as they are the organisation that enforced instruments the deal with indigenous rights exclusively. [18]
Since 1997, the nations of the Organization of American States have been discussing draft versions of a proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. [19] "The draft declaration is currently one of the most important processes underway with regard to indigenous rights in the Americas" [20] as mentioned by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. In 2016, the declaration was adopted by 35 member states by consensus while USA and Canada expressed general reservations. [21]
Indigenous persons, who form a majority of the Bolivian population, have been denied land rights owing to their traditional collective ownership of land under the so-called “ayllu” system. Although Bolivian law technically requires that wrongs against individuals and groups who once owned land under this system be redressed, injustice on this front is still widespread. Indigenous persons are insufficiently represented in government and suffer high unemployment. [22]
Amnesty International complained in a 2012 report that Bolivian authorities had made decisions about construction of a highway across the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure, TIPNIS) without consulting the indigenous persons who live there. This lack of consultation resulted in a good deal of confusion and conflict, with some indigenous people supporting the road and others opposing it, and the government reversing its plans more than once. [23]
Human Rights Watch asked Bolivia in 2011 to ensure “a prompt, thorough, and impartial investigation” of alleged police abuse of peaceful indigenous protestors near Yucomo on September 25 of that year. A report by the UN Committee for the Prevention of Racial Discrimination, issued in the same year, called on Bolivia to adopt urgent means to ensure that the Guaraní people are able to exercise their rights, including their rights to recover their ancestral lands. [24]
In accordance with the Bolivian constitution and law, seven special “indigenous districts” have been established in order to increase the participation of indigenous peoples in national politics. [22]In Canada "Aboriginal rights" (French : droits ancestraux) are those rights that Indigenous peoples enjoy as a result of their ancestors' long occupancy of the land, for example the right to hunt and fish a particular territory. [25] These are distinct from "treaty rights" which are enumerated in specific agreements between Indigenous groups and the state. Both treaty rights and Aboriginal rights are protected by Section 35 of the Canadian constitution of 1982.
The Indigenous people of Greenland gained home rule in 1979 and extended to self-government in 2009.
Indigenous peoples have a mere "remedial" right to secession in international law, irrespective of their right of self-determination and self-government, [26] leaving the existence of rights of secession to internal laws of sovereign states, and independence to the capacities of states.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the first and oldest specialised agencies of the UN. The ILO has 187 member states: 186 out of 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with around 40 field offices around the world, and employs some 3,381 staff across 107 nations, of whom 1,698 work in technical cooperation programmes and projects.
Uncontacted peoples are groups of indigenous peoples living without sustained contact with neighbouring communities and the world community. Groups who decide to remain uncontacted are referred to as indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. Legal protections make estimating the total number of uncontacted peoples challenging, but estimates from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in the UN and the non-profit group Survival International point to between 100 and 200 uncontacted peoples numbering up to 10,000 individuals total. A majority of uncontacted peoples live in South America, particularly northern Brazil, where the Brazilian government and National Geographic estimate between 77 and 84 tribes reside.
Minority rights are the normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or gender and sexual minorities, and also the collective rights accorded to any minority group.
Indigenous land rights are the rights of Indigenous peoples to land and natural resources therein, either individually or collectively, mostly in colonised countries. Land and resource-related rights are of fundamental importance to Indigenous peoples for a range of reasons, including: the religious significance of the land, self-determination, identity, and economic factors. Land is a major economic asset, and in some Indigenous societies, using natural resources of land and sea form the basis of their household economy, so the demand for ownership derives from the need to ensure their access to these resources. Land can also be an important instrument of inheritance or a symbol of social status. In many Indigenous societies, such as among the many Aboriginal Australian peoples, the land is an essential part of their spirituality and belief systems.
Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK), folk knowledge, and local knowledge, generally refer to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the United Nations (UN), traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions (TCE) are both types of indigenous knowledge.
The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) is a human rights declaration adopted by consensus at the World Conference on Human Rights on 25 June 1993 in Vienna, Austria. The position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was recommended by this Declaration and subsequently created by General Assembly Resolution 48/141.
Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 is an International Labour Organization Convention within the United Nations that was established in 1957. Its primary focus is to recognize and protect the cultural, religious, civil and social rights of indigenous and tribal populations within an independent country, and to provide a standard framework for addressing the economic issues that many of these groups face.
The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 is an International Labour Organization Convention, also known as ILO Convention 169, or C169. It is the major binding international convention concerning indigenous peoples and tribal peoples, and a forerunner of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing campaigners, participants in direct action, or just individuals acting alone. They can defend rights as part of their jobs or in a voluntary capacity. As a result of their activities, human rights defenders (HRDs) are often subjected to reprisals including smears, surveillance, harassment, false charges, arbitrary detention, restrictions on the right to freedom of association, physical attack, and even murder. In 2020, at least 331 HRDs were murdered in 25 countries. The international community and some national governments have attempted to respond to this violence through various protections, but violence against HRDs continues to rise. Women human rights defenders and environmental human rights defenders face greater repression and risks than human rights defenders working on other issues.
Human rights in the Philippines are protected by the Constitution of the Philippines, to make sure that persons in the Philippines are able to live peacefully and with dignity, safe from the abuse of any individuals or institutions, including the state.
The right to food, and its variations, is a human right protecting the right of people to feed themselves in dignity, implying that sufficient food is available, that people have the means to access it, and that it adequately meets the individual's dietary needs. The right to food protects the right of all human beings to be free from hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition. The right to food implies that governments only have an obligation to hand out enough free food to starving recipients to ensure subsistence, it does not imply a universal right to be fed. Also, if people are deprived of access to food for reasons beyond their control, for example, because they are in detention, in times of war or after natural disasters, the right requires the government to provide food directly.
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education, and other issues. Their ownership also extends to the protection of their intellectual and cultural property. The Declaration "emphasizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations." It "prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples," and it "promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development".
The World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) was a formal international body dedicated to having concepts of aboriginal rights accepted on a worldwide scale. The WCIP had observer status in the United Nations, a secretariat based in Canada and represented over 60,000,000 Indigenous peoples worldwide.
Indigenous people under the nation-state have experienced exclusion and dispossession. With the rise in globalization, material advantages for indigenous populations have diminished. At times, national governments have negotiated natural resources without taking into account whether or not these resources exist on indigenous lands. In this sense for many indigenous populations, the effects of globalization mirror the effects of the conquest in the mid 16th century.
Indigenous intellectual property is a term used in national and international forums to describe intellectual property that is "collectively owned" by various Indigenous peoples, and by extension, their legal rights to protect specific such property. This property includes cultural knowledge of their groups and many aspects of their cultural heritage and knowledge, including that held in oral history. In Australia, the term Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, abbreviated as ICIP, is commonly used.
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) is an organization of Indigenous Peoples from North, Central, South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific working for the Sovereignty and Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples and the recognition and protection of Indigenous Rights, Treaties, Traditional Cultures and Sacred Lands.
Ancestral domain or ancestral lands refers to the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The term differs from indigenous land rights, Aboriginal title or Native Title by directly indicating relationship to land based on ancestry, while domain indicates relationships beyond material lands and territories, including spiritual and cultural aspects that may not be acknowledged in land titles and legal doctrine about trading ownership.
Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is aimed to establish bottom-up participation and consultation of an indigenous population prior to the beginning of development on ancestral land or using resources in an indigenous population's territory. Indigenous people have a special connection to their land and resources and inhabit one fifth of the earth's surface. Such areas are environmentally rich in both renewable and non-renewable resources. The collective ownership style of most Indigenous Peoples conflicts with the modern global market and its continuous need for resources and land. To protect Indigenous Peoples' rights, international human rights law has created processes and standards to safeguard their way of life and to encourage participation in the decision-making process. One such method is the process of FPIC. There is criticism that many international conventions and treaties require consultation, not consent, which is a much higher threshold. Without the requirement for consent, indigenous people cannot veto government projects and developments in their area that directly affect their lives and cultures. FPIC allows Indigenous Peoples to have the right to self-determination and self-governance in national and local government decision-making processes over projects that concern their lives and resources.
Human rights in the Kingdom of Denmark are protected by the state's Constitution of the Realm (Danmarks Riges Grundlov); applying equally in Denmark proper, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, and through the ratification of international human rights treaties. Denmark has held a significant role in the adoption of both the European Convention on Human Rights and in the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In 1987, the Kingdom Parliament (Folketinget) established a national human rights institution, the Danish Centre of Human Rights, now the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants is an UNGA resolution on human rights with "universal understanding", adopted by the United Nations in 2018. The resolution was passed by a vote of 121-8, with 54 members abstaining.
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