Awas Tingni - Human Rights Case

Human Rights Case

In the late twentieth century, the Mayagna community sued the Nicaraguan government for rights to their traditional land and its resources. They were in dispute as the government had granted a logging concession to private interests in Mayagna traditional territory without consulting with the people, and despite their complaints and requests to demarcate their land.

In 2001 the people of Awas Tingni won the landmark human rights judgment, a ruling that Nicaragua had violated their rights; the Inter-American Court of Human Rights thus established the right of indigenous communities to their collective land as a basic human right. It was the first such ruling by a court with legally binding authority to rule that a government had violated the rights of indigenous people in their collective land. "The Court found that the right to property, as affirmed in the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, protects the traditional land tenure of indigenous peoples."

The judgment in Mayagna (Sumo) Community of Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua was made in 2001, but it was not until 2008 that the government of Nicaragua completed the process of surveying and titling the land to the Mayagna. They were assisted by several parties, including the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program of the University of Arizona Law School. Under a 2007 resolution, land which the government illegally granted to veterans of the civil war were to be returned, and the people of Awas Tingni were to receive title to a total of 73,394 hectares.

As a result of the decision, in 2003 the Nicaragua National Assembly passed a

"new indigenous land demarcation law.... This law defines a set of rules and procedures for the demarcation of indigenous communal lands in the Atlantic Coast. Nicaraguan officials declared that Awas Tingni would be the first community to have its land titled under the new law. In 2004 the first phase of the demarcation and titling process was completed with a diagnostic study and set of maps documenting the community’s demographics and traditional land tenure."