Declinazione del legame antropologico alle terre ancestrali nella chiave giuridica del diritto internazionale, tra riconoscimento e obbligo di consultazione dei popoli indigeni

At the end of 1994, the United Nations General Assembly decided that the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People would be celebrated every year on 9 August, thus commemorating the date on which the ad hoc working group of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights had first met in 1982. At the end of the second consecutive International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004 / 2005-2024), decided by the General Assembly, in order to undertake a careful monitoring and evaluation of the legal status of indigenous peoples, an issue that had until then been completely marginalised in the priorities of the international community’s agenda, the present contribution analyses the ancestral bond of indigenous peoples with Mother Earth in the light of its codification in international instruments as well as jurisprudential practice, based on an ABCDE framework, i.e. Actors (indigenous peoples), Behaviour (anthropological relationship to ancestral lands), Content (pre-existing rights of indigenous peoples over ancestral lands), Degree (panoply of normative sources, both hard and soft law), Effect (obligation of consultation procedures aimed at obtaining the prior free and informed consent of indigenous peoples for any decision affecting ancestral lands).