Indigenous Women's Rights and International Law: Challenges of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

This article explores the inadequacy of international human rights discourse to effectively engage with the rights of indigenous women. It refers to two documents that confer rights on indigenous womenthe United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007); and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1979)and argues that, despite these internationally recognized documents, indigenous women's rights continue to be given inadequate attention at both international and local levels. Through an analysis of indigenous womens rights in international law and the work of the United Nations' Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and with reference to feminist critiques of human rights law, the article suggests that indigenous human rights discourse in fact perpetuates exclusions of and power imbalances toward indigenous women. Finally, the article puts forward the Zapatista Women's Revolutionary Law as an example of effective indigenous womens rights developed by grassroots indigenous women.