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In 2009 international legal negotiations of particular relevance to Indigenous peoples continued under the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD); and the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). As in previous years, international human rights monitoring bodies developed jurisprudence on the rights of Indigenous peoples, contributing to the development of customary international law in the field. New Zealand was the subject of the UN Human Rights Council's (HRC) universal periodic review (UPR) process for the first time in 2009. The HRC focused on Maori and their rights during the UPR with calls for New Zealand to support the UN General Assembly's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Indigenous Peoples' Declaration) and to consider constitutional entrenchment of international human rights instruments and the Treaty of Waitangi.New Zealand's reluctance to recognise Indigenous peoples' rights persisted in 2009. New Zealand did not endorse the Indigenous Peoples' Declaration and Indigenous peoples' rights did not feature prominently in New Zealand's statements in international fora.

The developments that have taken place in New Zealand in relation to Indigenous Peoples rights under International law are discussed. Details of different committees formed and laws enacted to ensure and protect the same are highlighted.

2007 was a significant year for Indigenous peoples and international law. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples), after more than 20 years of negotiations, and the Human Rights Council established the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the EMRIP). Further, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) continued its work on traditional knowledge, as did the working groups associated with the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). Indigenous issues were considered in institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and, of course, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. New Zealand was also the subject of review by the UN Committees on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD Committee) and the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) on its compliance with its human rights obligations, some of which raised issues involving Maori. This review details New Zealand's state practice in these institutions.

Resistance: An Indigenous Response to Neoliberalism is a collection of papers from Maori academics, activists and leaders on the connection between global practices of neoliberalism and the diverse forms of Maori resistance that aim to destablize them.Aotearoa is one of the world leaders of neoliberalism. Successive New Zealand governments since 1984 have pursued neoliberal policies with a faith, vehemence and confidence in their success that few other governments appear to possess. At a time when 'capital flows across borders as it has never done before, and multinational companies have bigger budgets than many states have ever had', this book encourages people to look more closely at Maori views as integral and inspiring in a globalizing world.

Resistance: An Indigenous Response to Neoliberalism is a collection of papers from Maori academics, activists and leaders on the connection between global practices of neoliberalism and the diverse forms of Maori resistance that aim to destablize them.Aotearoa is one of the world leaders of neoliberalism. Successive New Zealand governments since 1984 have pursued neoliberal policies with a faith, vehemence and confidence in their success that few other governments appear to possess. At a time when 'capital flows across borders as it has never done before, and multinational companies have bigger budgets than many states have ever had', this book encourages people to look more closely at Maori views as integral and inspiring in a globalizing world.

Developed during a time of dramatic global upheavals and transformations, The New Imperial Order is concerned with the political economy of world order and the ontologies of being upon which the emergent global order is predicated. Positioned from a Maori perspective and contextualized within the international political and juridical framework, this book examines the political and juridical ontologies that shaped the development of international law and the world order of nation states. In engaging with these issues across macro and micro levels, the book identifies the nation state and new forms of regionalism as sites for the reshaping of the global politico/economic order and the re-emergence of Empire. Stewart-Harawira also tracks the role of education and the reconstruction of sovereign indigenous nations into dependent populations in the development of world order, and the profound impact of indigenous peoples’ proactive global and local responses in the reshaping of international law. In this work, the problematics of globalization are made visible through the privatization of services, the restructuring and commodification of knowledge and the creation of new categories of the dispossessed. Overarching these issues is a new form of global domination in which the connecting roles of militarism and the economy, and the increase in technologies of surveillance and control have acquired overt significance. In the first chapter of the book, the author identifies ontological and cosmological principles that are shared by many indigenous peoples as key signifiers of an alternative framework for socio/politico/economic order. In the final chapter she draws these principles together within the context of the fragmentation and integration which characterize the globalizing process, and proffers them as central to the revisioning of a transformed global order.

In recent years Maori people have adopted many strategies to protect and advance the well being and visions implicit in the exercise of tino rangatiratanga. Much of that work has been done at home, but an increasing number of Iwi and other Maori organisations are now participating in international affairs that are seen to have some relevance to our lives. They are joining a worldwide movement by Indigenous Peoples to reassert their rights and reclaim their rightful place.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s finding that the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 discriminates against Māori reminds us of the relevance of developments in international law on indigenous peoples’ rights. This article pinpoints the content of those developments and their potential impact domestically. Four conclusions are drawn: indigenous peoples’ land rights are binding on New Zealand via international human rights treaties and, to some degree, under customary international law; international human rights jurisprudence increasingly interprets individual human rights to protect indigenous peoples’ rights; international law relating to indigenous peoples may be applied by New Zealand courts; and New Zealand policy currently falls short of international law on indigenous peoples’ rights.

Discusses the New Zealand position on the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.