Indigenous women’s rights and international law

Abstract

As indigenous people, indigenous women are ensured the rights enshrined most explicitly in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007). The UNDRIP represents globally endorsed minimum standards and an important normative framework of the rights of indigenous peoples founded on international human rights law. As women, indigenous women are assured the rights contained most notably in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (the Women’s Convention) (1979). In spite of these two key international human rights instruments, however, indigenous women’s rights remain an overlooked issue both at international and local levels.This chapter examines whether the international indigenous human rights discourse adequately addresses the rights of indigenous women. Are indigenous women’s rights protected in international law? The chapter begins with a consideration of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the work of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. It then examines feminist critiques of the human rights law and how these analyses may have relevance to advancing indigenous women’s rights. Feminist legal scholars have argued that the international human rights framework has either neglected or failed women and their rights. The chapter asks whether the indigenous human rights discourse reproduces and perpetuates similar exclusions and hierarchies toward indigenous women that international law is regarded to maintain toward women in general. In conclusion, the chapter considers the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law as an example of an explicit expression of indigenous women’s rights developed by grassroots indigenous women. It juxtaposes it to the UNDRIP, asking the question how the Declaration would have been different had it taken the Revolutionary Law seriously and therefore, contributing to a fuller and more effective recognition of indigenous women’s rights in the international human rights discourse.