Federalization, Ethnicity and Natural Resources: Debates on Nepal’s Rural Development

Introduction Indigenous communities in Indonesia remain among the most vulnerable actors in natural resource governance despite constitutional recognition of their customary rights. Their marginalization is exacerbated by overlapping land claims, fragmented regulations, and limited representation in decision-making. This study analyses how governance law addresses these vulnerabilities and identifies legal–institutional pathways for stronger protection. Methods A qualitative design was employed. We conducted a thematic analysis of five core policy and legal documents and triangulated insights with reports from non-governmental and international organizations. A comparative review of global instruments—the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and ILO Convention No. 169—was used to benchmark Indonesian frameworks against international norms. Results Findings show that Indonesia’s legal pluralism remains weakly integrated, producing persistent uncertainty over the recognition of customary territories and inconsistent safeguards across sectors and jurisdictions. Institutional roles are diffuse, administrative procedures for recognizing customary communities and lands are uneven, and remedies for rights violations are limited. These gaps collectively sustain a protection deficit in resource governance. Discussion The study advances governance-law scholarship by proposing an integrated model that harmonizes state and customary systems through clear institutional mechanisms, standardized recognition procedures, and coordinated oversight. Aligning domestic rules with UNDRIP and ILO 169 principles would reduce normative fragmentation, clarify tenure security, and enhance participation. Policy implications include establishing a specialized national Indigenous Tribunal to deliver accessible adjudication and creating a unified land registration framework that formally records customary tenure. Together, these measures can promote more inclusive and sustainable resource governance in Indonesia and offer a transferable approach for other developing countries facing similar plural legal orders.

Throughout the world, indigenous peoples have advocated for the right to retain their cultural beliefs and traditional medicine practices. In 2007, the more than 370 million people representing 5000 distinct groups throughout the world received global recognition with the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP Article 24 affirms the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional medicines and health practices, and to all social and health services. Although not a legally binding agreement, UNDRIP encourages nation states to comply and implement measures to support and uphold its provisions. Within the context of indigenous health and human rights, Nicaragua serves as a unique case study for examining implementation of UNDRIP Article 24 provisions due to the changes in the Nicaraguan Constitution that strive for the overarching goal of affirming an equal right to health for all Nicaraguans and supporting the integration of traditional medicine and biomedicine at a national and regional level. To explore this subject further, we conducted a review of the policy impact of UNDRIP on health services accessible to the Miskitu indigenous peoples of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). We found that although measures to create therapeutic cooperation are woven into Nicaraguan health plans at the national and regional level, in practice, the delivery of integrated health services has been implemented with varying results. Our review suggests that the method of policy implementation and efforts to foster intercultural collaborative approaches involving respectful community engagement are important factors when attempting to assess the effectiveness of UNDRIP implementation into national health policy and promoting traditional medicine access. In response, more study and close monitoring of legislation that acts to implement or align with UNDRIP Article 24 is necessary to ensure adequate promotion and access to traditional medicines and health services for indigenous populations in Nicaragua and beyond.

Throughout the world, indigenous peoples have advocated for the right to retain their cultural beliefs and traditional medicine practices. In 2007, the more than 370 million people representing 5000 distinct groups throughout the world received global recognition with the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP Article 24 affirms the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional medicines and health practices, and to all social and health services. Although not a legally binding agreement, UNDRIP encourages nation states to comply and implement measures to support and uphold its provisions. Within the context of indigenous health and human rights, Nicaragua serves as a unique case study for examining implementation of UNDRIP Article 24 provisions due to the changes in the Nicaraguan Constitution that strive for the overarching goal of affirming an equal right to health for all Nicaraguans and supporting the integration of traditional medicine and biomedicine at a national and regional level. To explore this subject further, we conducted a review of the policy impact of UNDRIP on health services accessible to the Miskitu indigenous peoples of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). We found that although measures to create therapeutic cooperation are woven into Nicaraguan health plans at the national and regional level, in practice, the delivery of integrated health services has been implemented with varying results. Our review suggests that the method of policy implementation and efforts to foster intercultural collaborative approaches involving respectful community engagement are important factors when attempting to assess the effectiveness of UNDRIP implementation into national health policy and promoting traditional medicine access. In response, more study and close monitoring of legislation that acts to implement or align with UNDRIP Article 24 is necessary to ensure adequate promotion and access to traditional medicines and health services for indigenous populations in Nicaragua and beyond.

The advancement of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada has had a significant impact on the approval of energy projects since the introduction of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The legal concepts of consultation, accommodation, and consent have pushed the boundaries of our existing regulatory regimes and challenged the way we think about administrative processes. The move toward the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Canada, including the concept of “free, prior and informed consent,” is certain to further push those boundaries as governments advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. In canvassing current legislative, proposed legislative, and policy developments across Canada — in particular, recent legislative changes in British Columbia — there appear to be different models developing for incorporating UNDRIP into Canadian law. These models range from express requirements in relation to Indigenous consent on major project approvals, to more flexible frameworks that will enable governments to address UNDRIP incrementally over time. Ultimately, many important questions remain with respect to how UNDRIP will impact energy development in Canada.

Articles 27 and 34 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognise Indigenous Peoples’ laws. Art. 34 gives Indigenous Peoples the right to maintain their juridical systems or customs in accordance with international human rights standards. Although the UNDRIP is soft law, its core is arguably customary law and, therefore, a binding source of law. For States with Indigenous People, such as Norway, the UNDRIP is of paramount importance, from a legal, political, and not least moral perspective. This paper discusses norm hierarchies and tensions that are created in the meeting between the Indigenous customary law of the Sámi and statutory domestic Norwegian law. The introduction of customary, commonly unwritten, Indigenous rules into the judicial portfolio of a State creates an obvious challenge: what is their legal status? Can Indigenous law set aside domestic statutory norms? Some might argue that due to historical wrong, Indigenous law should always take precedence when domestic law conflicts with it. While Norwegian domestic law acknowledges the precedence of certain core human rights treaties over domestic laws, the same is not valid for Indigenous rights. How then should Indigenous custom be dealt with before a court of law, and how do the different legal systems relate to each other? This paper is foremost based on theoretical, to a lesser degree also on empirical material. It discusses on a general level the relationship between different legal systems within the same State and, on a specific level, the dealing of the Norwegian courts with Sámi Indigenous laws and customs.

The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) represents the culmination of an extraordinary process which has fundamentally transformed the status of indigenous peoples under international law. However, whereas the historic and symbolic importance of the instrument is indisputable, its overall value remains controversial. More precisely, since the UNDRIP does not per se create legally binding obligations, some doubts exist with regard to its legal significance and capacity to affect State behaviour. This article discusses these two intertwined issues in conjunction with an analysis of the evolving indigenous rights regime at the international level, with a view to establishing the overall potential impact of the UNDRIP. It argues that, given the specific context and circumstances, the non-binding nature of the instrument does not fundamentally undermine its value. By contrast, a number of factors suggest that the UNDRIP can generate reasonable expectations of conforming behaviour.

This chapter focuses on the rights to identity, existence, and non-assimilation in Articles 7(2), 8, and 43, which together enshrine rights to the protection of indigenous peoples' continued survival and existence, both physically as individuals and as cultural entities in accordance with levels of human dignity and well-being. Indigenous peoples pressed for the inclusion of such principles in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in the recognition that pre-existing international, regional, and national laws had failed to protect their survival as communities with distinct cultures, or recognise them as distinct peoples. The three provisions studied in this chapter reflect this central concern of indigenous group/cultural survival and flourishing as peoples. As such, the final agreed text of Articles 7(2), 8, and 43 must be seen as containing norms aimed at the development of existing international law, which would protect and confirm indigenous collectivities in ways not currently recognised or only now emerging.

The right of Indigenous peoples to provide or withhold consent in relation to development projects on or adjacent to their ancestral lands has been affirmed and articulated in international human rights instruments in recent decades, most recently iterated in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In response to the UNDRIP, a number of industries have developed consultation protocols that are not only inconsistent with FPIC characteristics by conflating the unique rights of Indigenous peoples as equivalent to other stakeholder interests. By so doing, these protocols may actually be the source of resistance to development projects. Simultaneously, management literature has sought to understand the right to FPIC from the lens of stakeholder management procedures and social license to operate. Drawing from literature in law, and expert opinion from the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this paper seeks to explain why Indigenous peoples continue to oppose resource development projects, while also offering a human rights-based paradigm with which FPIC may be understood by reframing Indigenous peoples as rights-holders rather than conventional stakeholders.

Call to Action #92 encourages corporations to apply the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as an organizational framework and provides concrete strategies to guide policy and operational activities to increase Indigenous participation in the economy (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015b; UN 2007). Call to Action #92 and the UNDRIP are explored to provide strategies to decolonize mainstream healthcare organizations and promote workplace structures that assist Indigenous nurses in thriving in the work setting. The recommendations in this synthesis paper can be used by healthcare organizations to support Indigenous reconciliation in Canada.

Canada is widely recognized as a global leader in human rights. Yet, when Indigenous peoples’ rights are included in its human rights record, Canada’s reputation loses some of its luster. It was only one of four countries in the world to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007. Sensitive to Canada’s shameful underperformance in Indigenous rights, the Trudeau government set out to make a change, promising that Canada would commit itself to a new, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples and that his government would immediately adopt and implement the UNDRIP. This chapter examines what implementation of the UNDRIP means for Canada and whether Canada’s position on Indigenous rights has actually changed under the Trudeau government. It argues that there is a troubling gap between Trudeau’s vision and rhetoric and the policy realities on the ground, creating an unnecessary risk to Canada’s human rights reputation and leadership in the international community. The chapter concludes by setting out the serious challenges presented by the implementation of Indigenous rights in Canada and offers some recommendations for implementation strategies.

This article examines whether impact and benefit agreements (IBAs) between industry proponents and indigenous communities, a common standard in natural resource development in Canada, could be a way to fulfil the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 benefit-sharing duty in Latin America, as many suggest. The article begins by analysing and determining the main features of this duty. It also reviews the key components of IBAs against the backdrop of the ILO Convention 169 benefit-sharing duty, concluding that it would be problematic to think of these agreements as ways to fulfil the obligation established in ILO Convention No. 169.

International occupational health

The management of natural resources has become a crucial agenda item at the community level of every country, due to the importance of a community’s direct involvement in the stewardship of these resources. The sustainable management of natural resources is not easy without the involvement of the community. To know the attitudes of residents in the communities in close proximity to Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) towards natural resource sustainable management policy, a study of CKNP in northern Pakistan was conducted. This is the first community study for this park. It is difficult to overstate the economic and geographic importance of this national resource to the Pakistani people at local and national levels, as well as at the international level. This is the world’s highest public park; as a natural resource it is not only important to the local community, it also has great relevance internationally. The study attempted to gauge the attitudes of the local community towards the sustainable management practices of CKNP. The results of this study showed generally positive attitudes towards the park. The majority of respondents revealed that the park’s primary appeal is its geographic location. Households were afraid that pollution in the park will gradually destroy the park’s natural resources. For sustainable management of the CKNP, community members expressed willingness to contribute to the betterment of park through volunteerism. Community members praised the government’s supportive actions, including budgetary support and public-awareness campaigns. As such, the positive attitude of the community towards the CKNP also revealed new insights for the community-centered sustainable management of natural resources in developing countries. This study also provides a research gap for future work relating to the sustainable management of community-based natural resources to consider more factors beside the factors used in this study.

Articles 12 and 25 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) articulate new collective and holistic approaches to religious rights. Previous iterations of religious freedom in international human rights instruments have tended to focus on the individual right to belief and the corresponding right to manifest that individual belief, either alone or in community. UNDRIP's explicitly anti-colonial aims led to the inclusion of distinctive religious rights in recognition of the fact that existing human rights instruments were ill-suited to the context of Indigenous religious and spiritual worldviews, beliefs and practices. Articles 12 and 25, while in a non-binding document, are a rich resource for domestic law to expand existing conceptions of freedom of religion to better address, protect, and advance the religious and spiritual rights of Indigenous peoples.

The notion that people have a sovereign “right to food” is affirmed in an array of international instruments including the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas began formally organizing around the concept of food sovereignty thirty years before the adoption of UNDRIP by convening meetings and summits that called attention to the ideologies and external forces that have been threatening indigenous food systems for hundreds of years. Aware of these hemispheric organizational activities, a number of Native North American poets and novelists began writing poetry and novels that illustrated the historic relationship between indigenous peoples and the foods that are culturally and nutritionally necessary to their survival. In this essay, I read Winona LaDuke's Last Standing Woman and Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes as “case studies” that contribute to critical env...