Reconciling Multi-Level Rights-Based Commitments in Development: Assessing the Legal and Administrative Imperatives of Responding to Education, Health Care, and Environment Protection Challenges

Abstract The principles of sovereignty, equality, and self-determination – which have long been the basis for nonintervention in the affairs of sovereign states – have more recently been widened to condemn outside interference by national governments in the affairs of indigenous communities within their territories. These same principles, however, may equally be employed as arguments by sovereign states to justify their engagement in the affairs of indigenous communities residing within their borders, thereby creating the potential for considerable legal, ethical, and political tension. States are urged to respect the autonomy of indigenous people as well as their right to develop, preserve and transmit their history, traditions, and values to future generations; yet states also owe obligations towards indigenous people to facilitate their enjoyment of certain established rights, even as the provision of these obligations may be incompatible with indigenous peoples’ established practices, values, interests, priorities, and beliefs. Multilateral agencies face a similar dilemma in their engagements with national governments: when to respect the sovereignty of national governments and when to champion international law and covenants (e.g., regarding the rights of women and sexual minorities)? Drawing on cases from education, health care, and environment protection, this paper proposes an analytical framework for articulating and reconciling multi-level rights-based development commitments in low-income countries, where the presence of multilateral agencies and intensifying imperatives to attain global development goals generates forces exacerbating (potentially) competing national and sub-national obligations. The paper juxtaposes the relationship between states and multilateral against the relationship between national governments and indigenous groups in exploring the question of whether the principles of international law can be extended to indigenous peoples in the same degree.