Equal Rights of Peoples and Indigenous Peoples

Abstract The chapter first analyses and appraises how the understanding of the term ‘peoples’ in international law, politics, and theory has progressed along a relatively consistent trajectory from the advent of the international normative order in the late-1600s to the present day. It explains how the drivers of this development have been first, social contract theories, and more recently, the understanding of to what populations the principle and right to self-determination attaches. The chapter then turns to the specific question of whether this development has culminated in Indigenous populations being recognized as beneficiaries of the right to self-determination, and by implication then as peoples de jure. Having answered this question in the affirmative, the chapter infers that this entails that the fundamental legal principle of equal rights of peoples ordains that Indigenous peoples are entitled to the same substantive peoples’ rights as are other peoples, including that of self-determination, but also that those rights materialize within a given context. Against this background, the chapter ends with a survey of what parameters the principle of equal rights of peoples establishes for the meaning, content, and reach of peoples’ rights as they are exercised by Indigenous peoples, using the right to self-determination as an illustrative example.