Towards Intersectional Properties: A Legal Materialist Take of Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in the Inter-American Court on Human Rights Author:

ABSTRACTMany indigenous communities in Suriname have been displaced from their traditional lands because the State does not recognise their collective property rights. Despite this, Suriname has not complied with multiple judgements of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that attempt to remedy the situation. The aim of this paper is to identify how the Inter-American System of Human Rights can stimulate full compliance with judgements of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concerning indigenous land rights in Suriname. The paper draws on a variety of sources in order to assess the current compliance efforts of the system. Based on this assessment, the paper suggests how to improve conventional mechanisms of compliance in order to stimulate full implementation of the judgements. The paper finds that the monitoring process of the Court, thematic reports, and country visits can be used more effectively in order to stimulate compliance. Drawing from transnational legal theory, the paper also suggest that the system should interact with international organisations and actors beyond the executive organs of the State in order to stimulate full compliance with the judgements of the Court. These findings can be used to increase the effective protection of indigenous land rights in Suriname.

Despite a noticeable shift in recent years, indigenous peoples in Asia continue to experience many forms of human rights violations, with the most serious perhaps being the loss of traditional lands and territories. The purpose of this paper is to examine indigenous peoples’ land rights and its application in Southeast Asia. To that end, the paper will provide an overview of the development of indigenous peoples’ land rights internationally; offer regional perspectives from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights; analyze the concept of indigenous peoples in Asia, juxtaposing it with concurrent difficulties being experienced on the African continent; examine three countries (Cambodia, the Philippines, and Malaysia) that recognize indigenous peoples’ land rights to some extent, whether through constitutional amendments, legislative reform, or domestic jurisprudence; and highlight the implementation gap between the rights of indigenous peoples in law and practice.

Indigenous land rights have emerged as a pressing issue, as traditional territories often overlap with areas targeted for economic development and natural resource extraction. This article offers an analysis of land dispute cases involving Indigenous communities adjudicated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). It evaluates the jurisprudential trends the Court has established, and how these trends have evolved over time. The article reviews: 1) landmark cases related to Indigenous land claims presented before the IACtHR, and 2) key provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights, notably Articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 21, 23, 25, and 26, to assess the Court's interpretative lens regarding Indigenous territorial rights. Findings highlight the Court's recognition of the interconnection between Indigenous land rights and a host of other human rights, the importance of legal recognition and access to judicial remedies, and recent decisions asserting the right to a healthy environment.

In Latin-America -as in most parts of the world- indigenous peoples are ‘the poorest of the poor, and the most excluded of the excluded’. Poverty goes hand in hand with their situation of vulnerability, exclusion and disempowerment. How can this situation be changed? How to find adequate frameworks able to facilitate the overturn of their structural disenfranchisement? Departing from the jurisprudence developed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACrtHR), this paper argues that the recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to collective property over their traditional lands and natural resources constitutes the most adequate strategy for poverty reduction that takes into consideration their own cultural distinctiveness. In fact, indigenous peoples’ special connection with their lands and territories is essential for both their material and cultural survival. Without access to their lands and natural resources, indigenous peoples are not only condemned to structural poverty conditions but they are also deprived of the necessary conditions for a life in dignity, that is, a life that takes into consideration their own world’s views and cultural understandings. In other words, in the case of indigenous peoples, the recognition and effective realization of their land rights constitutes the most effective strategy for reducing and ending their structural condition of poverty but also for guaranteeing their societal inclusion and cultural empowerment. Finally yet importantly, the effective recognition of indigenous peoples’ land rights could also be understood as a culturally sensitive approach to the realization of the UN 2030 Agenda and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 1 (End poverty in all its forms everywhere) that takes into consideration and respects their cultural diversity.

The Nuremberg tribunal was the expression and the beginning of states' recognition of their duty to prosecute genocide and other gross human rights violations. It was a first step towards fulfillin...

This article reviews the most important cases decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights between 2021 and 2023. The Court has introduced important changes in the understanding of legal concepts of Inter-American law that will significantly impact the region. The authors of the article provide an overview of the jurisprudence of the In-ter-American Court of Human Rights on the following range of issues: 1) transitional justice; 2) the right to the protec-tion of human rights and the right to informational self-determination; 3) the right to a healthy environment; 4) the right to freedom of expression; 5) sexual and reproductive rights; and 6) the obligations of businesses to respect hu-man rights irrespective of one’s sexual orientation. It is noted that the right to the protection of human rights and the right to informational self-determination have been recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the first time. The Court also resolved the issue of the status of human rights defenders by including in this category not only lawyers, but also paralegals, technical and administrative staff, members of the press and political scientists. In ad-dition, the Court has recognized the responsibility of the State for violations of the human right to a healthy environ-ment, as well as specified the State’s obligations in relation to mining activities that may have an impact on the envi-ronment. In decisions on cases involving violations of the right to freedom of expression, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has clarified the special nature of the protection to be guaranteed to journalists, in particular women journalists, and has also pointed out the special obligations of States to protect the rights of indigenous peoples in rela-tion to their access to radio broadcasting. In the authors’ view, these and other landmark decisions presented in this review demonstrate that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is committed to the progressive development of inter-American law. The categories of issues addressed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights presented in this article indicate directions for the evolution of the system of regional human rights protection in the Americas.

This paper examines the protection of the right to cultural identity in the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), where this question has appeared in connection with the rights of indigenous peoples. Although not expressly guaranteed in the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), the right to cultural identity has received protection in the IACtHR9s case law through an evolutionary interpretation of the rights to life and property, and other provisions under the ACHR. A landmark decision in the 2020 case of Lhaka Honhat Association v. Argentina has put into a new perspective the protection of the right to cultural identity. For the first time, it was clearly established that cultural rights are autonomous and judicially enforceable under Article 26 of the ACHR. The ICtHR9s revolutionary approach offers new opportunities for the judicial protection of environmental rights claims, contributing to the debate on sustainable development and the protection of future generations as well. The ICtHR has risen to be a regional standard-setting treaty body in the Inter-American system. Simultaneously, its far-reaching approach to protecting cultural identity and land rights has made the IACtHR9s case law a genuine reference point for other universal and regional international human rights organs.

Procedural Participation, the Role of Expert NGOs and Access to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

How to assess the issue of indigenous land rights in the face of man-m⁠a⁠d⁠e climate change and Amazon fires? How to classify the EU free trade agreement „Mercosur“ and relevant climate, environmental and indigenous rights? What are legal opportunities for indigenous people(s) on the international, inter-American and EU level, to prevent the loss of land and forests, and to protect themselves from climate change? On the basis of indigenous land and environmental rights in Brazil and reactions to the Amazon fires, environmental regulations of the "Mercosur Pact" as well as concerned human and indigenous rights are discussed. Further, this article deals with relevant inter-American law (individual indigenous land rights) and international law (collective land rights). Environmental and climate law provide legal and political options for indigenous people(s), for instance in Brasil. Negative impacts of climate actions on indigenous peoples, the competition between environmental protection areas and indigenous territories, the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in sustainable environmental protection and the allocation of Global Public Goods are discussed. There are various interactions between climate and biodiversity protection, human rights, indigenous peoples rights, and free trade between the EU and South America. While protecting forests as a carbon sink, negative environmental or social consequences must be avoided. Like trade agreements, environmental standards for the protection of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest should be enforceable. To reduce deforestation and to confine the effects of climate change, indigenous peoples rights have to be strengthened. The free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples to projects that may affect their territories is essential. It requires effective, coordinated solutions to protect human rights and indigenous land rights, and it needs a sustainable preservation of climate and forests - nationally and internationally. A collapse of the Amazon forest ecosystem would have global climate effects. In Brazil, alternatives to deforestation and destruction are: strengthening the rule of law and agro-ecology, and to defend indigenous territories.

Since 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has issued 14 sentences requiring the states to protect collective land ownership rights of Indigenous peoples and tribal groups that descend from the syncretism of Indigenous and African peoples. The objective is to assess the level of compliance of international responsibilities by offending states and the main difficulties that have hindered the process up to now. An initial set of typologies of the outcomes is presented, together with some general patterns concerning the challenges that remain for the effective legal protection of collective land ownership rights in Central and South America. Findings are based on the analysis of the documentation produced by the Court concerning these cases. Presently, Nicaragua is the only state that has completely fulfilled its orders.

In 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) seminally found self-amnesty laws on serious human rights violations to be null and void. However, later national reactions showed that this supranational control has faced challenges. Such supranational judicial authority has been exercised where amnesty laws and other exemption measures blocked judicial cases, democratic referendums upheld legislation, and peace-making processes existed.This article seeks to determine whether the traditionally interventionist jurisprudence of the IACtHR on amnesty laws/exemption measures has been legitimate under global constitutionalism standards. The standards considered are: human rights, namely, rights of victims of mass atrocities; consistency or coherence of this jurisprudence with international, regional and national practices; and democratic legitimacy and/or accountability considerations.Victim rights have underlain the IACtHR’s jurisprudence on amnesty laws and similar measures. Importantly, developments on victim rights are not exclusive to the IACtHR as case law of other supranational human rights bodies evidences. Among human rights courts and bodies, the IACtHR has exercised the highest level of control over amnesty laws/exemption measures, even nullifying national legislation. However, the IACtHR’s case law shares common principles with UN/regional jurisprudential developments and domestic practices in terms of inadmissibility of amnesties and other exemption measures in cases of serious abuses. Unlike the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the IACtHR has not deferred to sovereign state appreciation (conventionality control doctrine). Nevertheless, the IACtHR has arguably begun to move towards more ‘moderated’ approaches. This is advisable under democratic legitimacy considerations.

Article that discusses the active jurisprudential evolution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court). Through a literature review and within Public Law and the interface between Constitutional Law and International Law, the research has as its theme the jurisprudential evolution of the Inter-American Court, with the objective of analyzing the transition from an "optional" jurisdiction to qualify as a "mandatory" jurisdiction before the States Parties and International Human Rights Law. As a hypothesis, it is believed that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights "was born" as an "optional" jurisdiction at the international level; however, with the judgments and the jurisprudential construction, it came to be considered a "mandatory" jurisdiction for States in matters of human rights. As a result, it was found that the hypothesis of the was partially confirmed. The use of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights becomes an instrument of legitimacy for the ICC for the application of an international criminal law that seeks the protection of fundamental rights. This demonstrates that in order to be used as a source of human rights at the international level, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights establishes itself in the international arena as a true jurisdiction, whose effects transcend the reality of the States Parties and contribute to the construction of the normative acquis at the international level. It was noticed with the research that the Inter-American Court, through its jurisprudence, sought to qualify itself as a mandatory jurisdiction in matters of human rights, both before States and at the international level. This argumentative structure demonstrates the change in perspective of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ceased to emphasize monetary reparations and began to concern itself with the material aspects of human rights, an indication that its "active" development has established it as a "mandatory" jurisdiction at the international level.

The individual application procedure of the European Convention on Human Rights is well analyzed due to its unique success. However, concentrating on the European complaint instrument bears the risk of a too Eurocentric approach. Individual applications can also be found in the human rights treaties of the Organization of American States and the African Union. This article aims for a comparison of these instruments in order to contribute to a better understanding of institutional and procedural human rights protection. To provide a thorough analysis, it takes a historical, a normative and a de facto perspective. In a normative view on the contemporary institutional and procedural aspects, the European Court of Human Rights stands out by granting direct access to a judicial procedure. However, the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights is in some respect even broader than the ECHRs due to less restriction being imposed on the admissibility of individual applications. In contrast, proceedings at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights suffer from several deficiencies, for example, with regard to transparency and procedural rights of the applicant. Considering the practical effectiveness of individual applications, the European system clearly serves as a role model, albeit its influence being far more limited in Eastern Europe. Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have a remarkable implementation rate. In Latin-America as well as in Africa, nevertheless, comparable disadvantageous socio-political factors limit the practical impact of individual applications. Examples are a poor national human rights situation in average, a low level of education and social inequality. The African human rights institutions still need to establish effective individual human rights protection. Yet, contemporary characteristics of individual application procedures are only temporary results of a continuing historical development. Noticeable patterns are found in the way regional human rights systems successively overcome concerns of state sovereignty. In this process, courts and commissions play an important role by progressively interpreting treaty provisions and creating rules of procedure that expand their competences. This gives rise to hope that the »progressive evolution« of the individual application procedure will continue.

Tem main objective of this work is to present the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) to the legal professionals in Brazil, in particular to Brazilian judges. To accomplish that, we review the worldwide change of perspective concerning human rights that transpired as of 1948, by means of a new conception thereof. State sovereignty is relativized. The UN is organized, the Global Human Rights Regime is formatted, and, in its wake, the regional human rights regimes are also established. One by one, the European, African, and the incipient Arab and Asian regional human rights regimes are referred to and contextualized. At this point of the research, we focus on the Inter-American Human Rights System, the regional human rights regime of the Americas, and point out its origin, organs and normative instruments. Among its organs, we highlight the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as the court of last resort for the interpretation of the several normative instruments of the system, among which we point out the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) as the most important. Also known as Pact of San Jos, Costa Rica, this convention establishes a unique and efficient system of state responsibility for the infringement of its precepts. Pursuant to the ACHR, complaints under the IAHRS shall be made before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, whose competences are also reviewed. In order to grant to the reader an in-depth knowledge on the guarantees of an independent, impartial, and preappointed judge, the second chapter of this work focuses on the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. We set forth several litigation cases and one advisory opinion to convey to the reader a precise notion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights's construction of such guarantees. In the third chapter, from the concepts of an independent, impartial and pre-appointed judge in Brazil, we make a comparison with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights's case law and demonstrate that it is essential that Brazilian judges be acquainted with the IAHRS case law to necessarily apply it, whereas failing to do so may subject the State of Brazil to international responsibility. Themes such as the hierarchy of international treaties in Brazil, control of conventionality, and communication among courts are also reviewed in order to provide the reader with a broad perspective of the influence of the IAHRS on the Brazilian Laws.

These Rules regulate the organization and establish the procedure of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.