The collective right to indigenous property in the jurisprudence of regional human rights bodies

Abstract

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a proliferation of international human rights treaties, both within the United Nations system as well as at the regional level. These instruments are aimed at protecting individual rights and are based on the principle of universality.1 They depart from the premise that the rights they guarantee apply to all individuals everywhere, regardless of factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, language, religion, national or social origin. The rights in these instruments are intended to transcend different cultures and societies and it is accepted that ratifying states are endorsing instruments that concretise universal values for all individuals on their territory. These human rights instruments seem, by their very nature, to be irreconcilable with arguments that the applicability of human rights depends on the cultural context and/or that human rights are attributed to groups rather than individuals.