Collective Rights Of Indigenous Peoples

The focus of this book is on the PingPu peoples in Taiwan and their right to official recognition as "indigenous peoples" by the Taiwanese government. The result of centuries of colonization, indigenous tribes in Taiwan have faced severe cultural repression because of the government's refusal to accept ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity. The PingPu Status Recognition Movement is the result of a decade of activism by impassioned people seeking the right to self-determination, autonomy, and tribal legitimacy from the Han-Chinese-controlled Taiwanese government. This book examines, through in-depth interviews, questionnaires, field observations, and analysis of governmental and United Nations documents, the perspectives of those directly involved in the movement, as well as those affected by "indigenous" status recognition. Study of the PingPu Indigenous movement is vitally important as it publicly declares Taiwanese Indigenous population's humanity and collective rights and provides a more comprehensive analysis of identity-based movements as a fundamental form of collective human rights claims.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples set key standards for the treatment of indigenous people, and has significantly developed how indigenous rights are viewed and enforced. This commentary thematically assesses all aspects of the Declaration's provisions, providing an overview of its impact.--

This book addresses the right of indigenous peoples to live, own and use their traditional territories, and analyses how international law addresses this. Through its meticulous examination of the interaction between international law and indigenous peoples’ land rights, the work explores several burning issues such as collective rights, self-determination, property rights, cultural rights and restitution of land. It delves into the notion of past violations and the role of international law in providing for remedies, reparation and restitution. It also argues that there is a new phase in the relationship between States, indigenous peoples and private actors, such as corporations, in the making of territorial agreements.

In this book, a group of renowned legal experts and activists investigate the right of indigenous peoples to reparations for breaches of their individual and collective rights.

This study of the rights of indigenous peoples looks at the historical, cultural, and legal background to the position of indigenous peoples in a range of different cultures, including America, Africa and Australia. It defines who and what indigenous peoples actually are, and looks at their position in the light of the development of international law. The study the looks at their legal position, and their economic, social and cultural rights in respect of various laws and conventions passed on a national and international scale throughout the world. It considers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Racial Discrimination Convention, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the UN Draft Declaration in Indigenous Peoples and the Proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. There is discussion on how the development of human rights legislation and principles as a central tenet of international law has been of considerable benefit to indigenous peoples.

The field of ‘critical indigenous rights studies’ is a complex one that benefits from an interdisciplinary perspective and a realist (as opposed to an idealised) approach to indigenous peoples. This book draws on sociology of law, anthropology, political sciences and legal sciences in order to address emerging issues in the study of indigenous rights and identify directions for future research. The first part of the volume investigates how changing identities and cultures impact rights protection, analysing how policies on development and land, and processes such as migration, interrelate with the mobilisation of identities and the realisation of rights. In the second part, new approaches related to indigenous peoples’ rights are scrutinised as to their potential and relevance. They include addressing legal tensions from an indigenous peoples’ rights perspective, creating space for counter-narratives on international law and designing new instruments. Throughout the text, case studies with wide geographical scope are presented, ranging from Latin America (the book’s focus) to Egypt, Rwanda and Scandinavia.

It contains some twenty-three papers from representatives of the aboriginal people's organizations, of governments, and of a variety of academic disciplines, along with introductions and an epilogue by the editors and appendices of the key constitutional documents from 1763.