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In February 1840, Māori co-signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the British Crown. Partnership, protection, and participation are the fundamental principles provided in the Treaty. In April 2010, the New Zealand government endorsed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These two instruments provide indigenous peoples with the right to participate fully in decision-making that will affect their legal, social, economic, cultural, and political rights. Having endorsed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the New Zealand government is morally obliged to comply with the intent of the Declaration. The focus of this chapter is on the right of Māori to participate and be represented on the governing councils of local government. It will be demonstrated that the refusal by the New Zealand government in 2010 to provide dedicated Māori wards on the Auckland Council is contrary to the intent of the Declaration. The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi require the government to act with integrity toward the indigenous people of New Zealand. It will be argued that the failure of local government to utilize electoral options that will enhance Māori representation in local government breach obligations inherent in both the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Treaty of Waitangi.

The recognition of indigenous law in the 1991 Colombian Constitution initiated significant social, political, and cultural transformations within indigenous communities. This article explores how the indigenous law of Pijao communities in Tolima is being constructed, imagined and (re)produced by indigenous leaders who are simultaneously staking out their own political position through an engagement with these processes. The article suggests that this new generation of indigenous leaders seeks to ground its political legitimacy by drawing on the (legal) realm of the state; at the same time, challenges to its legitimacy are also increasingly framed in a legal idiom.

Grass roots movements in relationships of cooperation and conflict between firms, communities, and government have an important role to stop a living city from disappearing. This chapter describes and analyzes the implications of the collective action used by grass roots movements in the defense of an old mining town, Cerro de San Pedro, of being disappeared due to the pollution of fresh watersheds by the operations of a mining company and the effects on the living city of San Luis Potosì, in the center of Mèxico.

Purpose − In the 1990s, the New Zealand government began returning land and other natural resources to Maori ownership in compensation for their dispossession in the nineteenth century. This chapter examines the impact of the settlement of the Waikato-Tainui claim on the socioeconomic development of the tribe since the compensation agreement was signed in 1995.Design/methodology/approach − The ethnographic analysis is focused on the tribal debate that seeks to balance the corporate demand to maximize profits of commercial investments and the increasing demand of tribal beneficiaries for social services. This debate is situated within the broader discussion about the balance between ownership and (re)distribution, and between historical justice and social justice.Findings − The analysis demonstrates that the restoration of land to Maori ownership does not automatically result in an improvement of socioeconomic conditions for most Maori. Instead, it seems to facilitate a gradual transformation of tribal hierarchies into class distinctions.Research limitations/implications − Further research is required as this chapter shows that the settlement of Maori grievances does not immediately resolve all socioeconomic problems as was originally expected.Practical implications − The settlement of colonial grievances is inherently complex since each solution seems to create new problems, also because the sociopolitical organization of indigenous societies has changed fundamentally since the beginning of colonization.Social implications − It will be necessary to continue to negotiate historical and social justice in postcolonial societies.Originality/value − Ownership of natural resources does not automatically entail socioeconomic developments or improvements. Additional policy strategies are required to obtain the socioeconomic outcomes that people desire from their engagements with capitalism.

I intend to provide an understanding of the possibilities that exist for the judgment of wartime rape at the international, domestic and in-between levels.

What is required is an examination of prosecutions and judgments of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), the SCSL (Special Court for Sierra Leone) and the ICC (International Criminal Court). I employ an international law and gender studies approach.

To count as a crime against humanity, war rape must have been committed as part of a widespread attack on a civilian population. This reflects the idea that war rape is not based solely in the violation of a woman’s body. The problem is that war rapes occur absent the explicit purpose to destroy a community. This chapter provides insight to the historical background of wartime rape to scholars, feminist legal theorists, sociologists, NGOs and lawyers.

By alerting us to the fact that the international community appears to elevate violations of groups or communities over the violation of individual women during conflict, the chapter suggests that the human rights of women may not be fully protected.

This chapter examines World War II and its impact on international and military law. It covers the war’s key crimes, the Nürnberg and Tokyo tribunals, and the creation of the United Nations, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Genocide Convention of 1948.

This chapter explores the nature of military law and IHL during the cold war period. It explores what treaties were completed, Additional Protocols I and II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the ad hoc international tribunals of the 1990s and 2000s, and examines the ICJ’s ruling of the legality of nuclear weapons.