Strengthening of International Cooperation for the Protection and Empowerment of Indigenous Communities

The status of indigenous peoples and their rights has been one of the most studied topics of international law in recent years.Especially since the end of the 20th century, treaties and international documents approved by many states regarding the rights of these communities have been adopted within the framework of various international organizations.These communities, which could not gain a place in classical international law because they are not subjects of international law, were able to benefit from the protection of human rights with the development of modern international law.Now, in addition to individual rights, they also have collective rights, such as the right to own traditional lands, the right to establish their own representative institutions as a group, and the right to protect their customs and traditions and institutions.In addition, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for the first time in history, granted a subnational group the right to self-determination, which means the right to freely choose a form of government and permanent sovereignty.Natural Resources.Today, the Declaration is mainly claimed by doctrine to be part of customary international law and therefore binding on all states.