UN DERECHO JURISPRUDENCIAL. LA PROPIEDAD COLECTIVA Y LA CORTE INTERAMERICANA

Abstract

Thirteen guilty verdicts have been issued to this date by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for infringements of the communal rights that Article 21 of the Pact of San Jose de Costa Rica recognises to indigenous and tribal people. Fourteen years have passed since the first of these judicial decisions was issued. It is presumable that other states party to the American Convention on Human Rights will join Nicaragua, Guatemala, Surinam, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Honduras for violating the collective rights that this conventional provision protects, one of which is indigenous and tribal property. These rights derive from an evolutive and pro homine interpretation, where judicial dialogue and the coordination with extra Inter-American international law and comparative law play a leading role. Due respect for these rights require that the case-law from where they arise is well-known. This work offers a systematisation of the international obligations that Article 21 of the mentioned treaty establishes, and of the legal principles that constitute their basis, to aid in the fulfilment of a provision, which is far more complex than what a simple reading of it allows to anticipate.