CCPR/C/124/D/2668/2015 Annex [Original: French] Individual opinion of Olivier de Frouville (concurring) 1. I agree with the Committee’s conclusion in this case, namely, that there has been a violation of article 25, read alone and in conjunction with article 27, as interpreted in the light of article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 2. However, I believe that the Committee did not properly substantiate its decision on admissibility, which was adopted separately on 28 March 2017. 1 In that decision, the Committee notes that, by submitting the communication on her own behalf, the author brings the communication to the Committee as a member of the Sami indigenous people and as a member of the Parliament, of which she is the elected President. The Committee considers that, in that individual capacity, she may be affected by issues concerning the functioning of the Parliament and the elections thereto.2 Later in that same decision, the Committee notes that decisions taken by institutions of the Finnish State that have an impact on the composition of the Sami Parliament and the equal representation of the Sami can impact on the right of individual members of the Sami community to enjoy their culture and to use their language in community with the other members, and their right to equality before the law. 3 The decision of admissibility was therefore based on the finding of a double causal link: between the judgments of the Supreme Administrative Court and the composition and functioning of the Sami Parliament; and between the composition and functioning of the Sami Parliament and the rights of members of the Sami people under article 27 of the Covenant. However, the arguments advanced by the author did not clearly support this double causal link and the Committee’s decision was equally evasive. There was no proof offered as to how the application of the principle of self-identification significantly affected the composition of the electorate, much less the composition and functioning of the Sami Parliament. Furthermore, no concrete examples were given to demonstrate that, in any particular case, changes in the composition of the electoral body had had an impact on the rights of members of the Sami people under article 27. The Committee therefore did not explain clearly how the author could claim to be a “victim” of violations of her rights under articles 25, 26 or 27 of the Covenant. 3. However, the Views adopted subsequently by the Committee in a related case – Käkkäläjärvi et al. v. Finland4 – make it possible to remedy this lack of substantiation a posteriori. In this case, the Committee focused on the claims of the authors under article 25 of the Covenant. The case primarily concerned the right to participate in the conduct of public affairs of the Sami, as members of an indigenous people – thereby providing full justification for article 25 to be read in conjunction with article 27, as well as with article 1 of the Covenant. At issue here is the right of Sami people to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions, as well as their right to determine the structures and to select the membership of their institutions in accordance with their own procedures, rights recognized in article 33 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court have indeed had a significant impact on the Sami people’s ability to determine its membership collectively and on its right to take part in the conduct of public affairs through elected representatives in an established body. Moreover, the Court, in these decisions, failed to properly apply national legislation, which nevertheless clearly established an objective criterion of membership, as desired by the Sami themselves. By not applying this criterion and replacing it with a self-identification criterion, which the Court itself interpreted on a case-by-case basis, the Court restricted the right of the Sami people to 1 2 3 4 GE.19-04714 CCPR/C/119/D/2668/2015. Ibid., para. 8.5. Ibid., para. 8.8. CCPR/C/124/D/2950/2017. 13