Indigenous Diplomacy: Shifting from the Problem to the Solution

This article deals with the reach and influence of indigenous diplomacy in a context where citizens and civil society organizations participate increasingly in the foreign policy of countries. Gustavo Torres Cisneros asserts that indigenous diplomacyis becoming an essential instrument in the new relationship between States and indigenous peoples in their role as actors responsible for freely pursuing their economic, social and cultural development. He explains the emergence of indigenous diplomacy on multilateral platforms since the second half of the 20th. Century and emphasizes two immediate and crucial cases (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the negotiations on climate change) to illustrate the specificity and complexity of a phenomenon which is only beginning to be understood.