Avoided Deforestation (REDD) and Indigenous ... - Amazon Fund

The BC and the law clearly and fully recognize the legal status of the indigenous people
and communities as groups with rights and obligations that are duly represented by their
legitimate authorities (Art. 260 BC).
The Article 7 of the FLIPC recognizes the legal status of “indigenous people and
communities with the purpose of exercising their collective rights provided in the Constitution
of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, treaties, international pacts and agreements signed
and ratified by the Republic, and other laws.” 119 The identification of the legal, judicially and
extrajudicially, representative of indigenous people and communities depends on each group’s
internal order and organization according to their uses and customs, without any other limitations
than those established in the BC and the FLIPC. However, the law explicitly defines the concept of
Legitimate Authorities as “the people or collective institutions that one or more indigenous people
or communities designate or establish according to their social and political organizations and for
the functions that said people or communities define according to their customs and traditions.”
These legal recognitions do not force the legal entity of the indigenous people and
communities to depend on any type of posterior administrative act, such as the inscription of
statutes or others. In effect, the Venezuelan legislation sets itself apart from other countries’
legislations in the region by being especially clear and explicit about the recognition and exercise
of indigenous peoples’ and communities’ legal status, which facilitates their independent and
autonomous execution of legal business. So, the same fundamental law supports the chartering
of businesses and the development of economic activities on behalf of the people and
communities with full patrimonial status.
In addition to the explicit rights recognized in the Venezuelan legal system, both the BC and
the indigenous legislation explicitly incorporate as indigenous peoples’ and communities’ rights all
customs, languages and religions, as well as their habitat and original rights over the traditionally occupied
ancestral lands which are necessary to develop and guarantee their lifestyles. It corresponds to the National
Executive, with the participation of the indigenous people, to demarcate and guarantee the right of collective
ownership over their lands, which are inalienable, imprescriptible, unseizable and untransferrable, according to
what is established in the Constitution and the law.
119 All of the Venezuelan indigenous legislation refers to, indistinctly, indigenous people and communities,
assimilating them as different groups which are predicated the same rights. For example, the law defines
collective property as “the right of each people and community to use, enjoy, take pleasure in and administer a
material or immaterial good whose ownership belongs in an absolute and indivisible form to every and each one of its
members, with the purpose of preserving and developing the physical and cultural integrity of the present and
future generations” Art 3rd num 12 of the FLIPC. (Emphasis by author.)
Av o i d e d d e f o re s t A t i o n (redd) A n d i n d i g e n o u s p e o p l e s: experiences, chAllenges A n d o p p o r t u n i t i e s in t h e A m A zo n c o n t e x t 63