E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.5/2001/2 page 5 17. Persons belonging to indigenous peoples are of course fully entitled, if they so wish, to claim the rights contained in the instruments on minorities. This has repeatedly been done under article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Persons belonging to indigenous peoples have made several submissions under the first optional protocol to that Covenant. 18. That protocol does not generally make it possible to claim the group-oriented rights sought by indigenous peoples, but some modification of that point follows from General Comment No. 23 of the Human Rights Committee (fiftieth session, 1994, para. 7). The Committee noted that, especially in the case of indigenous peoples, the preservation of their use of land resources can become an essential element in the right of persons belonging to such minorities to exercise their cultural rights. Since the indigenous peoples very often have collective rights in land, individual members of the group may be in a position to make claims not only for themselves but for the indigenous group as a whole. 19. Some see a link between the right of persons belonging to minorities to effective political participation and the right of peoples to self-determination. The issue of effective participation is addressed below in the comments on articles 2.2 and 2.3. If participation is denied to a minority and its members, this might in some cases give rise to a legitimate claim to self-determination. If the group claims a right to self-determination and challenges the territorial integrity of the State, it would have to claim to be a people, and that claim would have to be based on article 1 common to the Covenants and would therefore fall outside the Declaration on Minorities. This follows also from article 8, paragraph 4 of the Declaration (see below). The same would apply in other contexts where the collective right to self-determination is claimed. The Declaration neither limits nor extends the rights to self-determination that peoples have under other parts of international law.6 20. While the Declaration does not provide group rights to self-determination, the duties of the State to protect the identity of minorities and to ensure their effective participation might in some cases be best implemented by arrangements for autonomy in regard to religious, linguistic or broader cultural matters. Good practices of that kind can be found in many States. The autonomy can be territorial, cultural and local, and can be more or less extensive. Such autonomy can be organized and managed by associations set up by persons belonging to minorities in accordance with article 2.4. But the Declaration does not make it a requirement for States to establish such autonomy. In some cases, positive measures of integration (but not assimilation) can best serve the protection of minorities. Article 1 1.1 States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity 21. The relationship between the State and its minorities has in the past taken five different forms: elimination, assimilation, toleration, protection and promotion. Under present international law, elimination is clearly illegal. The Declaration is based on the consideration that forced assimilation is unacceptable. While a degree of integration is required in every