A/HRC/27/29 64. The rights of indigenous peoples to participate in political and public life, including through the maintenance and creation of indigenous forms of governance, are well established in international law.45 The ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) contains specific provisions on the participation of indigenous peoples in all areas of public and political life. 65. The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples notes that “[m]ore recently, the indigenous-rights discourse has seen increased focus on rights not only allowing indigenous peoples to participate in decision-making processes affecting them, but to actually control the outcome of such processes”.46 66. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contains more than 20 provisions related to the right of indigenous peoples to fully participate in political and public decision-making. Under articles 5, 18 and 19 of the Declaration, indigenous peoples have the right to participate in political life. The Declaration also stipulates that indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination and in exercising this right, they have the right to self-government in their internal affairs and the right to develop and maintain their own decision-making institutions (see articles 2–5 and 18). 67. Specific positive duties for States to ensure the effective participation by indigenous peoples in decision-making include those of consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples and, in particular, the need to seek the “free, prior and informed consent” of indigenous peoples in relation to legislative and administrative measures that may affect them (art. 19). 68. In addition to the guarantees of equal participation for indigenous peoples in the broader public life of the State and in decision-making that specifically affects their rights, the participatory rights of indigenous peoples also have an “internal” dimension. This aspect relates to the promotion and protection of indigenous peoples’ exercise of autonomy and self-government and to the maintenance of their own legal and justice systems (see A/65/264, paragraph 46). 69. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has made a number of recommendations addressed to the United Nations on the ways in which the Organization could better promote the participation of indigenous peoples’ representatives in its different decision-making bodies as called for in article 41 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Secretary-General’s report on ways and means of promoting participation at the United Nations of indigenous peoples’ representatives on issues affecting them discusses barriers to indigenous participation within the United Nations system and observes that these include the limited resources of many indigenous groups and the fact that accreditation requirements for consultative status do not recognize the specificities of indigenous peoples’ representatives who might not be organized as nongovernmental organizations and often have their own governance bodies and institutions (A/HRC/21/24). D. Minorities and equal political participation 70. Persons belonging to minority groups remain underrepresented in the political and public processes and governing institutions in most countries “because they are either actively and intentionally restricted from participation, inadvertently disadvantaged by a variety of laws or policies, or because there is a lack of political will in the larger society to 45 46 See Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 23, para. 7. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Advice No. 2 (2011), para. 2. 15