CARE, OCAP®, the Maiam nayri Wingara principles, Te Mana Raraunga, the Local Contexts labels. No state held the pen. These live in the data-sovereignty room, and they are the strongest things on this site.
Established record, cited
The record / rights instruments
Real instruments. Read them like treaties.
None of these was gifted, Indigenous delegates fought some of them into existence over decades. And none of them escaped the state machinery they were negotiated inside, either. So this room does two things at once: it quotes each instrument exactly, and it runs the site's own lens over it, who held the pen, who benefits, whose consent it rests on, and which nations use it or refuse it. Every instrument also gets one plain sentence, because a right you need a lawyer to read is not yet a right.
Last research run
2026-07-10
Quotes checked against UN and treaty-body publications. Ratification counts and in-force statuses shift; each carries its own stamp below. Verify at the source before relying on anything here.
Before anything is quoted
Who held the pen?
"International Indigenous rights instrument" covers three very different kinds of document, and trusting them equally would be a mistake this site refuses to make. The honest taxonomy:
UNDRIP: a quarter-century of Indigenous delegates drafting alongside states, unprecedented, and a final text still softened by states before adoption. Won, and watered. Both facts stay visible.
ILO 169 was drafted by governments, employers and unions with Indigenous peoples largely outside the room; Nagoya and the WIPO treaty are state instruments that Indigenous caucuses pushed on from observer seats. Useful levers. Not voices.
Every instrument on this page is younger than the legal systems it applies to. Nations whose law predates the UN by millennia owe none of these documents their sovereignty, and some decline to anchor it in any UN text at all. That refusal is honoured here as a valid reading, not a gap.
So why quote them at all? Because they are the levers that already exist. When a nation walks a proposal, this site's C-Hour included, into a parliament, consent language that states have already signed is what makes the door swing. Tools, not scripture.
United Nations, adopted 13 September 2007
UNDRIP, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Adopted by the UN General Assembly with an overwhelming majority and only four votes against: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, each of which later reversed its position. It is a declaration rather than a binding treaty, but it has become the shared floor of the global conversation, and some states have begun writing it into domestic law (Canada's UNDRIP Act received royal assent in June 2021).
“Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
“States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”
“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.”
“States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.”
Article 31 is why this site's data sovereignty room exists: sciences, technologies, seeds, designs and knowledge are named as things peoples control, which, in the machine age, includes the datasets and models built from them.
Who stands behind it: Indigenous delegates drafted alongside states from a 1982 UN working group to the 2007 vote (the most sustained Indigenous participation of any UN process), and bodies from the Assembly of First Nations to the National Congress of American Indians campaigned for adoption. Bolivia wrote it into national law within months; Canada legislated an implementation act in 2021. Nations invoke it in courts and negotiations worldwide. Who questions it: Indigenous critics note the final text was softened by states: Article 46 was added late to subordinate everything to state territorial integrity; it binds no one; and recognition-based rights can quietly re-centre the state as the grantor. Some traditional governments decline to derive any standing from it at all. Both readings are honoured here.
In one plain sentence: peoples decide for themselves, and states must get real consent before touching their lives, lands or knowledge.
pen: Indigenous delegates + states, 1982–2007declaration, not binding lawcompromise: Article 46 shields state bordersfour no-votes, all later reversedThe consent standard
FPIC, free, prior and informed consent.
FPIC is not one clause; it is a standard threaded through UNDRIP (Articles 10, 11, 19, 28, 29 and 32) and through the Nagoya Protocol and ILO 169. Each word carries weight, and each is regularly hollowed out in practice.
Consent obtained under economic duress, deadline pressure or divide-and-rule tactics is not free. Neither is consent extracted by making refusal expensive.
Consent sought after the permits are issued, the dataset is scraped or the model is trained is theatre. Prior means the plan can still change, or stop.
Real information about scope, risk, benefit and downstream use, in forms and languages the people choose, with time and their own advisers.
A consent process whose only acceptable output is yes is a consultation ritual. FPIC includes refusal, conditions, and withdrawal later.
This site applies FPIC to itself: it lists no nation, holds no one's data, and treats "no" as a complete sentence.
In one plain sentence: nothing about a people without that people's genuine, revocable yes, asked before the plan is locked, not after.
pen: threaded through UNDRIP + Nagoya + ILO 169a standard, not a statuteroutinely hollowed into "consultation"; watch for itInternational Labour Organization, 1989
ILO Convention 169, the binding one.
The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention is the major binding international instrument specific to Indigenous peoples, for the states that ratify it. Around two dozen states have (heavily weighted to Latin America, with Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Luxembourg and Germany among the others, count stamped 2026-07-10). It replaced the openly assimilationist Convention 107 of 1957, reversing the doctrine that Indigenous peoples were a transitional problem to be absorbed.
Its spine: consultation through peoples' own representative institutions, rights to lands traditionally occupied, and participation in decisions that affect them. Where ratified, it is enforceable law, and Indigenous organisations have used it to win cases states expected to lose quietly.
Whose pen, honestly: the ILO drafts through a tripartite process, governments, employers and trade unions. Indigenous peoples were largely outside that room, and the convention was criticised for exactly that at its birth. It remains a state instrument about Indigenous peoples that happens to be the only binding one, which is precisely why nations in Latin America keep using it, eyes open, as a lever rather than a voice.
In one plain sentence: where a state has signed this, its consultation duties are law, not manners, and can be enforced.
pen: governments + employers + unions, 1989binding, but only ~two dozen ratifiersIndigenous peoples outside the drafting roomConvention on Biological Diversity, adopted 2010 · in force 12 October 2014
The Nagoya Protocol, benefit-sharing for genetic resources.
Nagoya operationalises access and benefit-sharing: those who use genetic resources, and the traditional knowledge associated with them, are to do so on the basis of prior informed consent and mutually agreed terms, with benefits flowing back. It sits on the Convention on Biological Diversity's Article 8(j), which calls on states to respect, preserve and maintain the knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous and local communities.
It is the closest existing answer to biopiracy: the long habit of patenting a people's seed, medicine or knowledge and selling it back to them. Its machinery is imperfect and unevenly enforced, but it exists, it is binding on its parties, and it names traditional knowledge as something consent attaches to.
In one plain sentence: use a people's genetic resources or the knowledge that goes with them, and you owe consent first and benefits after.
pen: states, within the CBD; Indigenous caucuses lobbying from observer seatsbinding on its partiesenforcement patchy: the seam to watchWIPO, adopted 24 May 2024 · not yet in force at last check (2026-07-10)
The WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge.
After a quarter-century of negotiation, WIPO members adopted the first intellectual-property treaty with provisions specifically addressing Indigenous peoples. Its core device is disclosure: patent applicants whose inventions are based on genetic resources or associated traditional knowledge must disclose the origin, the country, and where applicable the Indigenous people, those resources came from.
It enters into force after fifteen eligible parties ratify; at this page's last check it had not yet crossed that line. Disclosure is a modest tool, it does not by itself stop a patent, but it ends the era in which origins could simply be omitted, and it gives every downstream fight a paper trail.
In one plain sentence: patent something built on a people's resources or knowledge, and you must now say so, on the record.
pen: member states, after 25 years of Indigenous pressureadopted 2024, not yet in force (2026-07-10)a patent-system fix, not a sovereignty instrumentSources and honesty
Quoted in the open, held lightly.
Quotes on this page were checked against UN, ILO, CBD and WIPO publications on the stamped date. Counts of ratifications and in-force statuses move; treat every number here as a snapshot with a date on it, and the linked sources as the record.
quotes verbatimdates stampedcounts approximatenot legal adviceverify at source