A/HRC/19/75
60.
In several of its concluding comments, the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women has stated that women in rural areas should be given
priority in development programmes and that the State parties should protect women’s
access to land against the activities of private business and against forced evictions. For
example, in its concluding comments on India in 2007, it urged the State party to study the
impact of mega-projects on tribal and rural women and to institute safeguards against their
displacement and violation of their human rights. It also urged it to ensure that surplus land
given to displaced rural and tribal women was cultivable, and recommended that efforts
should be made to ensure that tribal and rural women have individual rights to inherit and
own land and property.63
D.
Rights of indigenous people
61.
The main international Convention protecting the rights of indigenous people is the
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) of the International Labour
Organization (ILO), ratified by 20 States. The Convention protects a large number of rights
for indigenous people working in rural areas. In particular, articles 13 to 17 recognize the
rights of indigenous people to their land and territories and their right to participate in the
use, management and conservation of those resources. It also enshrines the right of
indigenous peoples to participation and consultation regarding all uses of resources on their
lands, and the prohibition of their eviction from their lands and territories.
62.
To complement ILO Convention No. 169, the General Assembly adopted the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in December 2008. The
Declaration recognizes that indigenous people, both individually and collectively, have the
right to the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental liberties recognized in the
Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in
international human rights law. It then goes beyond the ILO Convention in recognizing that
indigenous people also have the rights to self-determination, land and territory. It refers to
the injustices endured as a result of colonialism and highlights the threat that globalization
currently poses. It also recognizes the importance of traditional knowledge, biodiversity and
the safeguarding of genetic resources. It limits the activities that third parties can carry out
on the lands belonging to indigenous communities. The fact that the Declaration has
already been incorporated into domestic law in some countries, such as the Plurinational
State of Bolivia and Ecuador, represents a step forward.
V. Ways and means to advance the rights of peasants and other
people working in rural areas
63.
Despite the existing human rights framework, peasants and other people working in
rural areas are victims of multiple human rights violations that lead to their extreme
vulnerability to hunger and poverty. To overcome this situation and further advance their
rights, there is a need (a) to better implement existing international norms, (b) to address the
normative gaps under international human rights law, and (c) to elaborate a new legal
instrument on the rights of people working in rural areas.
63
CEDAW/C/IND/CO/3, para. 47.
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