AWAS TINGNI V. NICARAGUA: INTERNATIONAL PRECEDENT FOR INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS?

I. Introduction The battle of Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua was the culmination of years of legal wrangling between the Mayagna Community of Awas Tingni ("Awas Tingni Community" or "Awas Tingni") and the sovereign state of Nicaragua. Awas Tingni is one of many communities indigenous to Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast region; the community has held its ancestral territory for hundreds of years and now appears to be succeeding in defending its rights to that territory in the face of state resistance. In doing so, the Awas Tingni Community could help set precedent for recognition of indigenous land rights in the Inter-American Court system and in international law generally. In 1995, the Awas Tingni learned of the Nicaraguan government's plan to grant a logging license to a Korean lumber company, SOLCARSA, on approximately 62,000 hectares of the community's homeland. 1 Although the Nicaraguan Constitution concedes equal protection under the law for the many indigenous communities of the state's Atlantic coast region, the government claimed that the Awas Tingni had neither legal title nor ancestral right to the land in question. 2 The legal battle culminated in a hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ("Inter-American Court" or "Court"). The Inter-American Court found Nicaragua in violation of several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, and ordered the state to demarcate and grant title to the land as property of the Awas Tingni Community as well as to pay reparations. 3 With its decision, the Inter-American ...