CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Daytec-Yañgot, Cheryl Leoncio |
|---|---|
| Title | RESPONDING TO ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF INDIGENOUS CLAIMS TO RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION AS A COUNTER-DISCOURSE |
| Summary | Most domestic laws and policies repudiate claims of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands; thus, especially in developing countries where investment climates are lax and regulatory mechanisms are enervated, indigenous peoples stand vulnerable to the adverse consequences of economic globalization projects that target their lands. Considering their situation, there is a need for international oversight to protect these peoples from the policies of their own States and obviate their extinction as distinct peoples. There is a need to adopt a legal counter-discourse to globalization and its externalities. The right of self-determination is the best vehicle that indigenous peoples can invoke to defend their lands and natural resources from development aggression facilitated by economic globalization because this right recognizes their power to control their natural resources. No other right enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirms their collective right to their resources. The problem is that legal scholarship continues to question the ‘peoplehood’ of indigenous peoples which in effect questions their claims to self-determination. And among those who agree that international law recognizes indigenous self-determination, there is a debate as to whether the configuration of this right encompasses a resource dimension, i.e. control of lands and resources, or it refers only to democratic entitlements the maximum of which are autonomy and self-government. This study takes the position that indigenous self-determination is textually expressed in international law, and even if not, there are substantive norms that justify it. Thus, it surfaces the normative and legal justifications for indigenous claims to self-determination. It also delves into what legal scholarship has overlooked: the nexus between indigenous right to self-determination and economic globalization, and the relevance of this right to its right-bearers who must face threats of development aggression on a regular basis. Hence, it argues that democratic entitlements alone subject indigenous rights to the risk of being supplanted by the will of the dominant population. Without a resource dimension, self-determination as the right to participate in political institutions and processes reduces indigenous peoples into co-authors of decisions that operate against their interests in an increasingly economically globalized world. But if resource control is recognized as an inherent dimension of self-determination, indigenous peoples can be equal players in the democratic field since they possess a bargaining leverage in the political decision-making processes. Self-determination then becomes a relevant legal counter-discourse to peoples forcibly introduced into the circuit of economic globalization that targets their lands for corporate expansion in the name of profit. |
| Supervisor | MACKLEM, PATRICK |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/daytec-yangot_cheryl.pdf |
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