A/HRC/15/35 participate freely in the government of the country (article 13), among other relevant provisions.18 In 2000, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights established the Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations/Communities, whose first report19 interpreted several provisions of the African Charter in accordance with international standards regarding the rights of indigenous peoples. A recent ruling by the African Commission for the first time dealt directly with the rights of indigenous peoples. In that decision, the Commission condemned the expulsion of the Endorois people from their land in Kenya for tourism development, and found that the evictions violated their human rights to property, health, culture, religion and natural resources. While not dealing explicitly with the right of participation, underlying the case was the fundamental issue that the Endorois had been excluded from all decision-making regarding the treatment of their lands.20 C. The right to self-determination 30. The normative international human rights framework for the collective right to participation is the right to self-determination. Affirmed in Article 1 (2) of the Charter of the United Nations and other major international legal instruments, including common article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, self-determination is widely acknowledged to be a principle of customary international law and even a peremptory norm.21 31. The right to self-determination of indigenous peoples is relevant to participation in decision-making in various ways. Indigenous peoples have the right to make their own independent decisions through which they determine their own political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Self-determination is an ongoing process which ensures that indigenous peoples continue to participate in decision-making and control over their own destinies. It means that the institutions of decision-making should be devised to enable indigenous peoples to make decisions related to their internal and local affairs, and to participate collectively in external decision-making processes in accordance with relevant human rights standards. 32. Self-determination is also recognized in article 3 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which imports identical wording from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and recognizes that indigenous peoples are entitled to the right to self-determination, as well as the principle of equality enshrined in article 2, recognizing that both indigenous 18 19 20 21 See also arts. 17 (2) and (3) and 19–21. Adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights at its twenty-eighth ordinary session, in 2005, available at http://www.iwgia.org/sw25165.asp. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Endorois Welfare Council v. Kenya, 4 February 2010. See S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), p.97; Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), p.489; Héctor Gross Espiell, “Self-Determination and Jus Cogens” in UN Law/Fundamental Rights: Two Topics in International Law, Antonio Cassese, ed. (Alphen aan den Rijn, Sijthoff and Noordhoff International Publishers BV, 1979), p.167; Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), p.45; Patrick Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991), p.14. 9