Legally Sculpting a Melting Arctic: States, Indigenous Peoples and Justice in Multilateralism

This Chapter draws attention to the interface of multilateralism and international Indigenous rights enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (undrip).1 While there is no universal understanding of multilateralism, definitions have been developed in international relations theory. Keohane defines multilateralism as ‘the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions.’2 Ruggie argues that in addition to this quantitative aspect, what makes multilateralism a distinctive form of coordination is that it takes place ‘on the basis of certain principles of ordering relations’3 between the states involved. Building on these earlier definitions and taking account of the role of nonstate actors in multilateralism, Bouchard and Peterson conceive ‘21st century multilateralism’ as ‘three or more actors engaging in voluntary and (essentially) institutionalised international cooperation governed by norms and principles, with rules that apply (by and large) equally to all states.’4 The present work engages with the practice of contemporary multilateralism in the context of the negotiation and implementation of multilateral