Abstract
The role of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter, the Commission and the Court, respectively) in assessing the interpretation and advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of the Americas, and especially Latin America, is absolutely undeniable. The landmark decisions of these bodies have set what has been defined by the Court itself as an “evolutionary interpretation” of human rights, which has been firstly conceived and applied in a case of violation of land rights of Indigenous Peoples, i.e. Comunidad Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua of 2001 (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2001, para.148). In the words of the Court, “human rights treaties are living instruments, the interpretation of which must evolve over time and reflect current living conditions” (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2012, para. 161). In particular, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man of 1948 and the American Convention on Human Rights – Pact of San José (ACHR) of 1969 must be interpreted extensively to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, notwithstanding the absence of any expressive norm or provision on Indigenous rights until the adoption of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2016, which, however, is a non-binding document.
In this frame, this chapter aims to explore both how the Commission and the Court have analysed the alleged violations of Indigenous rights and how they have developed their legal reasonings in two recent and pivotal cases, namely the Case of the Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2012) and the Case of the Kaliña and Lokono Peoples v. Suriname (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2015).