A/HRC/34/49 obligations to ensure that such laws and policies satisfy the requirements of legitimacy, necessity and proportionality. 56. In particular, human rights bodies have emphasized that States should protect the special relationship of people with the territory that they have traditionally occupied when their subsistence and culture is closely linked to that territory. For example, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights has held that States have heightened obligations to protect the right to property, as recognized in the American Convention on Human Rights (art. 21), of Afrodescendant tribal communities. Because such communities have their own customs and a special relationship with their ancestral territories, the Court held that, like indigenous peoples, they “require special measures that guarantee the full exercise of their rights, particularly with regards to their enjoyment of property rights, in order to safeguard their physical and cultural survival”.75 These special measures include an obligation on the State to recognize and protect their communal property right in the territory and the natural resources they have traditionally used. Restrictions on this right are acceptable only if they are previously established by law, necessary, proportional and have “the aim of achieving a legitimate objective in a democratic society”. 76 In addition, restrictions may not deny a community’s survival as a tribal or indigenous people, which requires the State to conduct assessment, consultation and benefit-sharing and, with respect to projects that would have a major impact, to obtain their free, prior and informed consent. 77 Similarly, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged the review of forestry laws “to ensure respect for ethnic groups’ way of living, livelihood and culture, and their right to free and prior informed consent in decisions affecting them, while protecting the environment” (see CERD/C/THA/CO/1-3, para. 16).78 57. Human rights bodies continue to clarify the duties owed to non-indigenous as well as indigenous people whose way of life depends directly on ecosystems. 79 While much more work remains to be done to define these obligations and the obligations owed to others in vulnerable situations (who may include women, children, the elderly, the disabled and the extremely poor) in relation to environmental harm in general and the loss of ecosystem services in particular, the obligations are already clear enough that States and others should take them into account. 58. These obligations apply not only to measures aimed at exploitation of resources, but also to those aimed at conservation. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has identified many examples of forced displacement from protected areas, whose consequences have included “marginalization, poverty, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity, extrajudicial killings, and disrupted links with spiritual sites and denial of access to justice and remedy” (see A/71/229, para. 51). Non-indigenous communities, including Afrodescendants, have also experienced adverse effects as a result of conservation measures (see, e.g., A/HRC/25/53/Add.1, para. 63). While States should do more to protect 75 76 77 78 79 18 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, judgment of 28 November 2007, Saramaka People v. Suriname, para. 85. Among other sources, the Court drew on the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), whose scope includes tribal as well as indigenous peoples. Ibid., para. 127. See also paras. 96, 115 and 121. Ibid., paras. 128-140. See, generally, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendent Communities, and Natural Resources: Human Rights Protection in the Context of Extraction, Exploitation, and Development Activities (2015). See also general recommendation No. 34 (2011) on racial discrimination against people of African descent, para. 4. The Human Rights Council open-ended intergovernmental working group on a United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas may provide another opportunity for such clarification.