Contact them or leave them alone? The right to voluntary isolation of isolated indigenous peoples from the human rights perspective

Abstract

The issue of the protection of the human rights of uncontacted/ isolated peoples and peoples in initial contact in Latin America has been present since the second half of the 20th century and remains an ongoing debate up to date. The goal of the current paper is to describe the threats uncontacted/ isolated peoples face, and to examine how could the protection of the human rights of uncontacted indigenous peoples be ensured. The paper will elaborate the existing legal and practical frameworks for the protection of peoples in voluntary isolation. The research focuses on the qualitative, conceptual analysis of the right to voluntary isolation, approaching it from both a legal, societal, and anthropological perspective. The doctrinal analysis of the right, sheds light to the differences in the legislative text and the resulting scope of the right to isolation in seven Latin American states which has PVI ontheir territories. The conceptual part of the paper examines the clash of human rights with the right to isolation, distinguishing three categories of rights; the ones mutually reinforced by the right to isolation such as the freedom from genocide, freedom from slavery, the right to land, the right to an own legal system etc., the second group of rights comprises the right to culture, the right to self-determination, the right to health and the freedom from discrimination, whose reinforcement/ conflict with the right to isolation is context dependent. This paper presents a critical approach towards the right to voluntary isolation, claiming that the human rights controversies around the right, and intra-community human rights violations in isolated tribes together with the practical unfeasibility of the right itself, makes it inadequate for the protection of isolated indigenous groups. Alternatively, a peaceful, controlled contact might better serve for at least the physical and possibly for the cultural survival of the currently isolated indigenous peoples.