Indigenous autonomy and justice for latin american indigenous women

Abstract

My paper deals with indigenous peoples’ rights, focusing on Latin American case-law related to gender issues. Latin American Courts have faced cases related to sexual crimes or domestic violence among indigenous people and have to choose between giving pre-eminence to women’s rights or indigenous autonomy. On deciding those cases, the tools provided by the proportionality test are paramount in order to analyse the case-law. The indigenous rights regimes (ILO-169, UNDRIP) may prevail or not against other human rights systems (which specially protect women or children) according to the facts of the case, but also according to domestic legal cultures modelled by the country’s historical evolution.