The Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: An Overview

Abstract

1 29 June 2006, A/HRC/1/L.10. 2 In 1949, the General Assembly recommended that the Economic and Social Council carry out a study ‘on the social problem of the aboriginal populations . . . of the American continent’, see GA Res. 275(III), 11 May 1949. Additionally, the International Labour Organization (ILO), one of the UN specialised agencies, began to focus on indigenous issues and in 1957, following a number of studies and expert meetings organised under the auspices of the ILO, the first international binding instrument regarding indigenous peoples was adopted: ILO Convention No. 107 Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries 1957, 328 UNTS 247. It entered into force on 2 June 1959. This convention was subsequently revised, because of its widely criticised integrationist approach, by ILO Convention No. 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries 1989, 1650 UNTS 384 (ILO Convention No. 169). However, it should be noted that although the former convention is closed to further ratifications, it is still in force for 18 States (Angola, Bangladesh, Belgium, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Iraq, Malawi, Pakistan, Panama, Portugal, Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia). For an analysis of the ILO’s involvement in indigenous matters, see Rodr|¤ guez-Pin‹ ero, Indigenous Peoples, Postcolonialism, and International Law. The ILO Regime (1919-1989) (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2005). 3 For example, the attempt made in the 1920s by the leader of the Council of the Iroquois Confederacy to have the League of Nations consider the Iroquois dispute with Canada. On this, see Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at 57.