Handbook of Indigenous Peoples' Rights

This handbook is a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview of indigenous peoples’ rights. Chapters by experts in the field examine legal, philosophical, sociological and political issues, addressing a wide range of themes at the centre of debates on the rights of indigenous peoples. The book addresses not only the major questions, such as ‘Who are indigenous peoples? What is distinctive about their rights? How are their rights constructed and protected? What is the relationship between national indigenous rights regimes and international norms?’ but also themes such as culture, identity, genocide, globalization and development, and the environment.

The book is divided into eight sections, which will each discuss and analyse a number of themes at the heart of the debates on the rights of indigenous peoples.

• Part 1: Indigeneity
• Part 2: Rights and Governance
• Part 3: Indigenous Women's Rights
• Part 4: Development and the Environment
• Part 5: Mobilization for Indigenous Peoples' Rights
• Part 6: Justice and Reparations
• Part 7: International Monitoring and Mechanisms for Indigenous Peoples' Rights
• Part 8: Regional Case Studies

This book will be essential reading for academics working in the field, students on courses in human rights, international relations, political science, philosophy, sociology and law. It will also be of interest to practitioners and activists working in the indigenous rights field and in the human rights field more generally.

Corinne Lennox is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, and Associate Director of the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research focuses on issues of minority and indigenous rights protection, civil society mobilisation for human rights, and on human rights and development. She has worked for many years as a human rights practitioner and trainer with various NGOs, including at Minority Rights Group International (MRG). She has been a consultant on minority and indigenous rights for the UNDP, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and several governments. She is a regular contributor to the annual State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples Report (MRG) and has published on transnational dimensions of minority and indigenous rights in the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights and in several edited books.

Damien Short is Director of the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and a Reader in Human Rights. He has spent much of his career researching and writing on indigenous peoples’ rights and reconciliation debates issues in Australia, a monograph on which, Reconciliation and Colonial Power: indigenous rights in Australia, was published by Ashgate in 2008. Since then he has researched memory and genocide in Australia, publishing his work in Memory Studies, the International Journal of Human Rights and the Journal of Genocide Research. More recently, he has researched the impacts of Tar Sands production in Alberta, Canada on downstream indigenous communities. Damien Short is a frequent contributor to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Human Rights.