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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]

Indigenous peoples are amongst the most affected by climate change. Its effects threaten the very survival of their cultural identity which revolves around a strong connection to their ancestral lands and natural resources. Indigenous peoples have thus played a prominent role in the recent development of international human rights-based climate litigation. Against this background, this paper examines their specific status and legal tools in this regard. It first recalls how they obtained the recognition of their special relationship with their natural environment as well as specific environmental rights under international law, both in specific instruments of protection of indigenous peoples' rights and under general human rights law. After emphasizing their significant role in advancing environmental protection under international human rights law, the article then enquires whether the recognised environmental component of indigenous peoples' fundamental rights might allow them to develop stronger substantive legal arguments in human rights-based climate litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, critics of the United Nations Human Rights Council commonly focus on the perceived negative role that states from the Global South play in Council proceedings. These 'Western-centric' assessments fail to consider the Global South's role in advancing their own human rights preferences. This article describes the Global South's norm advocacy at the Council from 2006 through 2017 using thematic resolutions, an understudied but preferred tool of the Global South at the Council. This article divides thematic resolutions into three possible motivations for Global South advocacy – in response to domestic issues, international issues, and cultural differences between regions, and includes an exemplary case study from each category. The article shows the Global South is very active in human rights promotion but chooses to focus on human rights that differ from the Global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public's grievances with long-drawn incessant bloody clashes between the Fulani herdsmen and local farmers in all parts of Nigeria, together with economic recession or national economic slowdown, climatic change, anti-grazing laws, the religious crisis, and the strains of electoral campaign politics in the country – thus, convoluting efforts for the country's long-term stabilisation. High poverty levels and dwindling financial assistance have added to the Nigerian states' anxieties of being discarded once again. This article illuminates the contradictory perceptions among the main stakeholders in Nigeria and global world on the trajectory of the Fulani herdsmen insurgency stage. The article contends that the farmers' and herdsmen's clashes are substantially a war of perceptions on the progress made thus far. This broadening divergence in perception will result in making a long-term stabilisation strategy difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Africa, owing to a lifestyle that is culturally and collectively dependent on land and its natural resources, indigenous peoples are adversely affected by climate change. This is despite the fact that they contribute least to its cause. While this situation requires the protection of indigenous peoples' land tenure and use, this is generally not yet the reality in the domestic laws of states in Africa. Premised on four propositions, this article makes a case for a regional policy to safeguard indigenous peoples' land tenure and use in the light of climate change challenge in Africa. In the main, the propositions are: the indigenous peoples have a distinctive perception of land tenure and use relevant for adaptation and mitigation purposes; the land tenure and use is adversely affected by climate change; there is weak protection of indigenous peoples' land tenure and use under the national and international climate change response frameworks, particularly the National Adaptation Programmes Plan of Action (NAPA) documentation as well as land-related Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and REDD+ mitigation initiatives; and there are emerging regional activities with the potential to crystallise into a statement of policy. The proposed policy which should embody detailed normative and institutional safeguards on land tenure and use, the article recommends, can be initiated by the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Commission) for the protection of indigenous peoples facing the adverse impact of climate change in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does climate change create conditions in which ethnic groups, particularly in developing countries, become more likely to struggle for scarce resources which can then spur ethnically motivated violence and serious atrocities? Or is the relation between climate change and atrocities, if there is one, far more complex and perhaps indirect? How should climate change be viewed as a risk factor for the onset of violent ethnic conflict? What practical relevance could climate change effects have on early warning and prevention of serious human rights violations including crimes against humanity and genocide? The author first considers whether climate change science warnings deserve to be taken seriously before reviewing empirical studies focussing on the supposed link between climate change and ethnic conflict. Second, he argues that it is valuable to treat climate change as a possible risk factor for ethnic conflict situations in which crimes against humanity or genocide might be perpetrated, and to reflect upon early warning and prevention in this connection. The author then sets out five considerations that research on the question of a causal link between climate change and ethnic conflict should take into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical disappearance of a state's entire territory is an event forecasted to happen as a result of sea-level rise, affecting some of the smallest nation states in the world, primarily islands in the South Pacific. The focus of this article is on the human rights of the inhabitants of the disappearing states when they are forced to relocate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]