“The International Labour
Organization (ILO) Convention
169 is the only binding
international treaty dealing
with indigenous peoples and
land rights.”
and other vulnerable groups, and improving
the policies and building the capacity of District
Management Committees (DMCs) to manage
these impacts is acute (ADB,2009). The Paris
Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005
established global commitments for donors and
partner countries to improve the management
and effectiveness of aid in reducing poverty and
inequality, increasing growth, building capacity,
and accelerating achievement of Millennium
Development Goals. These principles provide
a powerful impetus for donors to help foster
better integration of social and environmental
considerations into developing country partners’
strategies and priorities and to continue and
intensify their efforts in relation to harmonizing
approaches toward addressing social and
environmental issues. The Accra Agenda for
Action, adopted in 2008, reaffirmed these
principles and further emphasized the importance
of country systems.
The International Labour Organization (ILO)
Convention 169 is the only binding international
treaty dealing with indigenous peoples and land
rights. The Convention requires that parties to it
respect the cultures and institutions of indigenous
and tribal peoples, their right to continued
existence within their national societies, their
52
right to establish their own institutions and to
determine the path of their own development.
The Legal Status of Indigenous Peoples
in International Law
Colonialism and later the process of independence
have been seen as a universal reason across the
globe for the limited recognition of indigenous
political and territorial rights. The oppressive
history has followed another painful regime
of development leading to displacement and
uprooting of natives. Therefore two streams of
development in international law for indigenous
people have been undertaken. Firstly, at the level
of the United Nations (UN) and ILO, both of which
have a long history of developing the definition of
“what and who” constitutes indigenous peoples.
However, through ILO Convention No. 169 and the
draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples (UNDRIP), the two main international
commitments on the issue of indigenous peoples,
the needs for addressing rights and recognition
of indigenous peoples have been brought to the
forefront.
ILO Convention 169 of 1989 (a revised version of
ILO Convention 107 of 1957) defined indigenous
peoples as “peoples in independent countries who
are regarded as indigenous on account of their
descent from the populations which inhabited
the country, or a geographical region to which
the country belongs, at the time of conquest
or colonization or the establishment of present
state boundaries and who, irrespective of their
legal status, retain some or all of their own social,
economic, cultural and political institutions” (ILO
Convention 169, Part I, Article Ia).
On the other hand, consensus on the definition
was sought through a series of UN workshops
Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)
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