ABSTRACT
The Indigenous rights regime places political and moral demands on states by asking them to adopt constitutional, legislative, and domestic policies that recognize and protect the individual rights of Indigenous citizens, but also their collective rights as peoples, including over land and self-determination. Given the major if not subtly revolutionary challenges posed by the emerging regime, the high levels of commitment required to implement it, and its non-binding nature, states have predictably responded in numerous ways. This chapter considers some of those responses, along with typical and unusual state compliance. It analyzes data from sixty countries with significant Indigenous populations to determine five prevailing patterns: compliance, non-compliance, under-compliance, partial compliance. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) considers sixty countries around the world with significant populations of Indigenous peoples, and each year it compiles data from those countries in its report, The Indigenous World.
