Customary Rights: Holding the Line

Recognizing Ethnic Minority Customary Land Rights in Vietnam and the Philippines

Most ethnic minorities in Vietnam such as the Vietnamese-Thai, Tay, Nung, Hmong, Muong and Dao have a special relationship with the land, elements and other living creatures. This relationship goes beyond mere economic interests to cultural and spiritual connections to the places they have inhabited for generations. These connections have been transmitted and nurtured from generation to generat...

Balancing Rights or Building Rights? Reconciling the Right to Use Customary Systems of Law with Competing Human Rights in Pursuit of Indigenous Sovereignty

In 2007, after more than 20 years of exhaustive negotiations, drafts and re-drafts between indigenous groups and member states, the United Nations (“UN”) finally adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (“Declaration”) by an overwhelming majority.2 The UN thereby recognized the right of indigenous peoples “to promote, develop and maintain their . . . distinctive customs, spir...

The Formation of Customary Law

Holding the line against diagnostic inflation in psychiatry.

pet diagnoses and from consumer advocacy groups who worry a great deal about false negatives but tend toward indifference about false positives. The only pushback against all of these pressures causing diagnostic inflation comes from those practice guidelines that suggest a cautious, stepped care approach to treatment [5, 6] . However, these efforts have not been sufficient to hold the diagnost...

The Emerging Customary Law of Space