Rural Local Communities as Holders of Human Rights: From Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling to Small-Scale Local Community Whaling?

ABSTRACT This article examines the status of rural local communities within the international framework of human rights. The adoption in 2018 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) has made the theme particularly topical. The UNDROP is an instrument designed to advance the recognition of human rights with specific relevance for rural communities and to develop locality as a factor contributing to stakeholdership in the international human rights system. Rural local communities consist of both indigenous and non-indigenous people, the legal status of whom can be quite different from each other. A practical example used for demonstrating this is the international legal regime governing whaling. With respect to attempts to revise the whaling regime to be more inclusive while benefiting both indigenous and non-indigenous populations involved in small-scale hunting of whales, the UNDROP has interesting potential.