Worldwide, 2.5 billion people today depend on lands managed through customary, community-based tenure systems. Although land and natural resources are recognised as essential elements for the realisation of many human rights, international human rights law does not recognise a human right to land, except for indigenous peoples. With the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas (undrop), the right to land is now recognised for new categories of rural workers. This article explores the governance of land and natural resources beyond the case of indigenous peoples’ rights. It argues that undrop contains key and mutually reinforcing elements of the human rights and collective action approaches to the governance of land and natural resources, and therefore has the potential to ensure the social and environmental ‘viability’ of the commons.

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We express our solidarity as Indigenous Peoples living in areas that are the most vulnerable to the impacts and root causes of climate change. We reaffirm the unbreakable and sacred connection between land, air, water, oceans, forests, sea ice, plants, animals and our human communities as the material and spiritual basis for our existence.

Women represent a large part of the 2.5 billion people who depend on lands managed through customary, community-based tenure systems and are especially reliant on commons for their lives and livelihoods. They have very often limited and unsecured access to land and natural resources and tend to be excluded from decisions concerning them. Far from representing a homogenous group, they face varying challenges that are the result of multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, whereby gender dynamics intersect with other characteristics, such as age, disability, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status. Peasant and indigenous women, in many instances, face the compounded impact of the lack of recognition and violation of the collective rights of their communities, which is often the legacy of histories of colonization, conquest, dispossession and discrimination, and patriarchal norms, exacerbated by neoliberalism and the commodification of land and natural resources. The nexus between individual and collective rights is one of particular importance, but has received limited attention, including as regards the gendered effects of human rights violations of collective rights. In the present article, the nexus between collective and individual rights of peasant and indigenous women is illustrated by considering the experience surrounding the recognition and implementation of collective rights to land in Sub-Saharan Africa and the impact on women's right to land. The article argues that peasant and indigenous women's right to land is best protected through interventions aimed at guaranteeing both their collective and individual rights. There is a need to take into account and address simultaneously the barriers that indigenous and peasant women face with regard to their collective as well as their individual rights. These barriers include those ascribed to the discrimination and social, economic and political marginalization suffered by their peoples and communities, as well as those related to patriarchal power structures within and outside them. Addressing these barriers requires the respect, protection and fulfillment of both collective and individual human rights of women and a careful analysis of the interaction between these rights.

This chapter assesses Articles 29, 30, and 32 to consider natural resources and the environment. Article 32 bears a profound relationship with the right to self-determination and defines overall the contours and the requirements for States' disposal of natural resources, in line with the contemporary emphasis on human-rights based and participatory forms of development. The provision is in fact pivotal to enabling indigenous peoples to set and pursue their own development path and requires participation and engagement at a broader level, beyond ad-hoc consultations on specific projects. Thus, the issue of use and control of natural resources in indigenous territories should be addressed more broadly in the light of the recognition of indigenous peoples' right to determine their priorities and strategies for the development and use of their lands and territories in Article 32(1) of the Declaration.