Indigenous Peoples and the International Legal System: A Still Inaccessible Domain?
Claudia Masoni
Volume 18, Number 1 (2019) 18 (1): 98-110
Keywords Indigenous culture, participation, fairness, identity, customs
Abstract
The paper illustrates that, while Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and traditional knowledge are today widely studied and discussed at the international level, Indigenous holders and stakeholders of traditional knowledge still struggle to attend in person those international forums where their issues are being discussed and cannot personally deliberate on matters that would ultimately greatly affect their lives. The consequence of this is serious: not only Indigenous Peoples are often forbidden any actual participation, but they are also denied any right to intervene in the law-making process that so deeply affects their cultures and traditional way of living. The article explains that Indigenous Peoples are the sole stakeholders of their cultures and should personally manage the process of selection of the representatives who will attend international forums in total respect of the traditional roles of the keepers of knowledge and the customary laws of the community. This would avoid any corruption of the information presented and, consequently, would pre-
vent any manipulation of legal and economic assessments. Only then, actual Indigenous representation will be de facto attained.
Claudia Masoni
Published June 1, 2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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