ABSTRACT
The international human rights system is increasingly concerned about indigenous peoples’ land rights. The instruments and the documents of the international system provide substantive and procedural tools for addressing land rights, which also influences the work of other human rights institutions and other international bodies such as the World Bank. This body of law increasingly affects domestic policy, legislation, and the judiciary. Australia, for example, adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination as part of its national law, which led to the recognition of the Aborigines’ land rights. However, despite these developments, international law continues to have limited protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. It lacks comprehensive instruments that can prosecute and defend indigenous land rights. The existing instruments are limited by state sovereignty, internal policy, and a state’s willingness to accept the jurisdiction of international bodies. The ability of any international system to provide practical protection for indigenous rights depends on a number of elements that include recognition of such rights and the ability to execute them through judicial and enforcement systems. Therefore, it is often not enough to have protection in the system’s documents; there is also a need for a judicial system to execute these rights and enforce them. This chapter introduces the protection of indigenous peoples’ land rights under international law and the limitations of such protection in the Bedouin’s land case in Israel. It discusses major instruments in international systems and introduces some of the major instruments in two regional systems, the Inter-American system and the European system of human rights.
