Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

258 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
Any private individual (which could include a group of individuals)
may file an application to the ECHR alleging a violation
of the rights enshrined in the Convention. Submissions
by individual persons, groups of individuals or NGOs are
referred to as “individual applications,” as opposed to those
of State Parties. As with the other mechanisms it is the affected
party who makes a complaint, and it can only be done if all
available domestic legal remedies have been exhausted. 21
In addition, there are a number of other mechanisms,
including a European Commissioner for Human Rights. This
an independent non-judicial institution within the Council of
Europe, which plays an important role in the protection of
human rights. Although the Commissioner cannot act upon
individual complaints, they can draw conclusions and take
wider initiatives on the basis of reliable information regarding
human rights violations suffered by individuals. 22
There has to date been no landmark case in the European
Court in favor of indigenous peoples’ land rights, although
a number of cases have made progressive decisions on the
protection of minority rights. For instance, in the case of
Handölsdalen Sami Village and Others v Sweden, the Court effectively
supported the Sami villages in the substance over
their legal complaint in the dispute over reindeer grazing. It
failed, nonetheless, to deal with the key question of whether
the Sami’s reindeer grazing is a protected property. 23 The
Court still has potential in this area, as long as it engages with
evolving rights; particularly looking to the jurisprudence of
the Inter-American Court. 24
The Asian Human Rights Situation
Despite being home to the majority of the world’s indigenous
peoples, there is no equivalent of the developed human
rights mechanisms in other regions. This is partly because, as
with Africa, at least some of the countries in the region have
struggled against the aspirations, or even the existence, of
indigenous peoples. Bangladesh amended its Constitution in
2011, but still refused to recognize their indigenous peoples as