A/HRC/41/54 to produce goods for the world market and to serve the purposes and needs of capitalism”.32 Not only did colonial extractivism plunder colonial territories and racially stratify labour globally, but it also forced territories of extraction into political and economic subordination to colonial nations (and, in the case of Latin America especially, subordination also to the Catholic Church).33 27. During the colonial period, corporations – State-owned and otherwise – played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining colonial extractivism, and generally (though not invariably) derived great profit from it. For example, in 1511, Portugal was the first European power to establish a bridgehead in the trade market after the conquest of the Sultanate of Malacca. In the 1500s, Spain colonized the Philippines; and, in 1619, the Netherlands, acting through the Dutch East India Company, captured Sunda Kelapa (present-day Jakarta) for the purposes of trade and further colonial expansion. Later, in 1641, the Dutch took Malacca from the Portuguese. These acts set in motion a long history of colonization in South-East Asia. 28. International legal doctrines were central to embedding racial inequality and subordination into the colonial extractivism economy. International law denied sovereignty to colonized peoples and it did so on a racial basis. Indeed, sovereignty doctrine in the nineteenth century “is a history of the processes by which European states, by developing a complex vocabulary of cultural and racial discrimination, set about establishing and presiding over a system of authority by which they could develop the powers to determine who is and is not sovereign”.34 The doctrine of discovery, which has been a subject of analysis by special procedures mandate holders, also offers an example of international legal doctrine that was pivotal for indigenous land dispossession and extractivism in colonial territories (see E/C.19/2014/3). IV. Global structural racial inequality and the contemporary extractivism economy Applicable equality framework 29. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples is among the important statements that Member States have made to repudiate colonialism. In its first two articles, the General Assembly declares the following important principles of decolonization: the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and cooperation; all peoples have the right to self-determination; and by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. 30. The two treaties at the foundation of the international human rights system – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – both begin (in art. 1) by enshrining the equal right to self-determination of peoples, the equal rights of all peoples freely to dispose of their natural wealth and resources, the equal rights of all peoples not to be deprived of their respective means of subsistence, and the obligations of all States parties to promote and respect the realization of the right to self-determination. In the Declaration on the Right to Development, the General Assembly explains (in art. 1 (2)) that the right of peoples to selfdetermination includes the exercise of their inalienable right to full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources. It further articulates the following duties of great importance in the context of extractivism: States have the duty to cooperate with each other in ensuring development and eliminating obstacles to development. States should realize their rights and fulfil their duties in such a manner as to promote a new international 32 33 34 8 Ibid., p. 550. Brand, Dietz and Lang, “Neo-extractivism in Latin America”, p. 137. Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 100.