An Indigenous Right to Be Heard on the International Stage?

In the early 20th century, Indigenous peoples were effectively locked out of international organisations. In Self-Determination As Voice, a hugely valuable work of scholarship, Natalie Jones surveys the extent to which that has changed. Mechanisms for Indigenous participation in the United Nations and other organisations have proliferated since the creation of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1982 and especially since the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007. Jones concludes that it is arguable that there is now sufficient practice and opinio iuris to evidence a rule of customary international law about Indigenous participation in international governance. In this review essay, it is suggested that some might not fully agree with her analysis, either because they are more doubtful about the opinio iuris or because they place more weight on the practice of economic organisations and treaties that continue to exclude Indigenous peoples. But in any case the book identifies an accelerating trend. It also raises challenging questions about the role of soft law and how much it differs from international law in the strict sense.