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Case of the Kaliña and Lokono Peoples v. Suriname . Series C, No. 309. Merits, Reparations and Costs. At http://www.corteidh.or.cr. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, November 25, 2015.
International Decisions: Edited by David P. Stewart
On November 25, 2015, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) held that the state of Suriname had violated the rights of two indigenous groups by denying recognition of their juridical personality and their entitlement to collective property and judicial protection. In Kaliña and Lokono Peoples v. Suriname,1the Court also considered the impact of nature reserves on indigenous land rights, as well as the legitimacy of private titling of property that encroaches on land for which collective title has not been attained. The decision pushes the Court's previous jurisprudence significantly--and somewhat controversially--by asserting that under the American Convention on Human Rights,2indigenous peoples are entitled, as collective entities, to recognition of their legal personality. In so doing, the Court challenged ordinary assumptions about the individualized character of most adjudication regarding international human rights and made the possibility of enforcing collective rights more palpable.
Initially filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Commission) in 2007,3the case involved eight communities of the Kaliña and Lokono indigenous peoples of the Lower Marowijne River in Suriname. They claimed the state had not established a legal and regulatory framework recognizing their rights to collective ownership of their traditional lands and natural resources, but had instead issued individual property titles to non-indigenous persons, granted concessions and licenses to carry out mining operations, and established three separate nature reserves in part of their ancestral territory, without their consent and to their detriment. Moreover, they argued, the state's procedures for granting the mining concessions and licenses and establishing the nature reserves did not include mechanisms for consultation or obtaining their free, prior, and informed consent. Because they lacked legal personality, they contended, they were unable to exclude others from their ancestral lands, to challenge mining concessions, or to contest the creation of nature reserves in their traditional territories.
The Court's judgment rested not only on the parties' submissions, its own observations, and the Commission's findings, but also on its own prior jurisprudence, in particular its 2007 and 2008 judgments in Saramaka...