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This article analyses the impact of COVID-19 on the rights of indigenous peoples, particularly in Brazil. It deals with the current situation of the Brazilian indigenous peoples, the impacts of the pandemic, the rights created on the adoption of protective sanitary measures for indigenous people and land rights in Brazil. Does the Brazilian government comply with international law, with constitutional rights of indigenous peoples in the current COVID-19 crisis, particularly with the Brazilian Supreme Court decision on the adoption of protective sanitary measures for indigenous people? With a focus on the 2020 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this paper will identify and examine the gaps in protection of the indigenous peoples rights by reason of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. This paper argues that the crisis is misused as an occasion for land invasions, deforestation, forest fires and the denial of basic indigenous rights. Especially in Brazil, a transformative change, an emergency support for indigenous peoples, and a still stand agreement on logging and extractive industries operating next to indigenous communities are needed. Brazilian NGO statements give guidelines as to how to manage the threats of the present pandemic on indigenous peoples of Brazil. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations and the International Labour Organisation all offer further relevant suggestions as to how to address the serious impacts in the response to and the aftermath of this crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Nicaragua handed down traditional land to the Awas Tingni community. Earlier, in 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that this Indian community has collective rights to their traditional lands, natural resources, and environment. It set an important precedent for the rights of indigenous peoples in international law. In 2005/06, the same Court released seminal indigenous land rights cases: In the case braught by the Yakye Axa people against Paraguay in 2005 the Court expanded on its earlier decision in Awas Tingni regarding enforced indigenous communal land rights. The lACourt held that when the State is to determine whether communal ancestral land rights or current individual land rights will prevail in the same property, it could be necessary to restrict the right to individuals private ownership of property in order to preserve the cultural identity or a democratic and pluralistic society' In the ,,Sawjoyamaxa decision" (2006), the Court added a temporal condition to the right of indigenous peoples to claim and to regain their ancestral lands in Paraguay: The State must evaluate claims on a case-by-case basis, using the analysis set forth in `Yakye Axa'. Already in 2004, a report concerned a petition presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the State of Belize by Maya Communities, citing `Awas Tingni': The Commission concluded that the state violated the right to property enshrined in the `American Declaration' to the detriment of the Maya people by failing to take effective measures to delimit, demarcate and officially recognize the communal property rights to the lands they have traditionally occupied and used and by granting logging and oil concessions. Until then, the report was the clearest statement of the law protecting indigenous land rights in the hemisphere. In 2006-08, lACommission received complaints lodged by indigenous peoples from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama. Like in a report on traditional territorial rights of the Kelyenmagategma community (Paraguay, 2007) the still prevailing question arose, whether indigenous peoples land and resource rights exist on the basis of traditional use and occupancy and in how far these rights are safe (in view of a state refuse to consider traditional property rights according to international law standards). In 2007, all these cases influenced the Supreme Court of Belize ruling that the government must recognize indigenous Mayans' customary tenure to land and refrain from any act that might prejudice their use or enjoyment of the land. This is the first national judgment rendered with reference to "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples"; as such, it could have legal repercussions worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]