International laws and federal law of the Russian Federation on indigenous peoples: a comparative study

The article represents a comparative study of international law and the Russian legislation on indigenous ethnic groups in economic, political, cultural and historical contexts. At the beginning of the article the author analyzes creation of international law about indigenous ethnic groups on the basis of such organizations as the UN and the ILO. The author analyzes the key directions of declarations and conventions accepted by these organizations during the 20th and 21st centuries, their historical prerequisites, cul-turological and economic value. The author gives a conclusion that at the turn of the 21st century there is a cardinal change of trends in international law, from integration of indigenous ethnic groups into globalization society to preservation of their cultural identity. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of the modern situation in international law based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007. The author reveals three main criteria for the analysis of the articles of the declaration - economic, political and cultural orientations, distributes articles in the directions and draws a conclusion about what direction prevails in the document. The key direction, which represents the main interests for the author is economic privileges to indigenous ethnic groups, in particular the question of land tenure and land use. The third part of the article is devoted to the formation of Russian legislation concerning indigenous ethnic groups. The pre-Soviet period (on the example of the charter about management of foreigners by Speransky), the Soviet period (the Constitution of RSFSR) and the modern period (the Federal Law on the Rights of Indigenous Ethnic Groups No. 82-FZ) are mentioned. Also the latest changes in the Russian Federal legislation, such as order No. 565 of 2009 about economic compensation to indigenous ethnic groups, are analyzed. The author separates articles of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation by the same principle as the declaration of the UN, comparing two documents and analyzing the latest changes in them. The main accent of this analysis is devoted to the economic component of the two documents, character of the economic privileges provided to indigenous ethnic groups. In the conclusion the author says about the nature of the development of modern legislation of the Russian Federation on indigenous ethnic groups, its rapprochements with international law, gives positive and negative moments of the rapprochement, predicts the further development of the federal legislation and possible problems connected with the emergence of conflict situations when implementing the federal law on the spot.

Keywords

Authors

References