Steven Wheatley

Democracy, Minorities and International Law

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Table of cases, opinions, treaties and other documents Introduction 1. The rights of minorities 2. The self-determination of peoples 3. Democracy Conclusion.

The role of the special rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the development and promotion of international human rights norms

The activities of the Special Rapporteurs are increasingly objected to by those states subject to country mandates. The role has developed a quasi-judicial aspect with Special Procedures mandate holders receiving information on allegations of human rights violations and requesting governments for clarification of the facts. The role also has an advisory capacity with Rapporteurs producing their findings and recommendations following country visits. The importance of the Special Rapporteur system appears evident, yet there is no consensus on good or best practice in the way that mandates should be carried out or the extent or limits of the responsibilities of governments to assist Special Rapporteurs. Moreover, there is limited systematic scholarly examination of the nature and impact of the role of the Special Rapporteur in international law.

Conceptualizing the Authority of the Sovereign State Over Indigenous Peoples

The objective of this article is to evaluate whether the distinctive nature of the international law on indigenous peoples reflected in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) can be explained by reference to the service conception of authority developed by Joseph Raz. The article rejects arguments that the distinctive character of UNDRIP can be justified by ideas of ‘Indigenous Sovereignty’, not least because ‘sovereignty’ was developed in Western political thought in contradistinction to a constructed and imagined dystopian state of nature endured by the indigenous populations of the Americas. Instead, the work seeks to understand the UNDRIP regime in the light of Raz’s conceptualization of legitimate political authority, concluding that the inchoate and under-theorized international law on the rights of indigenous peoples becomes comprehensible within this framework.