A/HRC/45/38 Annex Advice No. 13 on the right to land of indigenous peoples 1. States should recognize indigenous peoples as indigenous peoples. They should also recognize indigenous peoples’ right to their lands, territories and resources in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the development of this right as expressed by regional and international human rights bodies. Moreover, States have an obligation to implement other attendant rights, including the rights to life and to live in dignity. 2. States should implement the advice provided in other studies of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples relating to land rights, in particular the study on free, prior and informed consent and the studies on the participation of indigenous peoples. 1 States should also implement international, regional and national decisions on indigenous peoples’ rights. 3. States should ensure that, through consultation with indigenous peoples, the type of land tenure (ownership, usufruct or variations of both) granted to them conforms with the needs, way of life, customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned and is respected and ensured. 4. States should establish, in consultation with indigenous peoples, the legislative and administrative measures and appropriate and effective mechanisms necessary to facilitate the ownership, use and titling of indigenous lands, territories and resources, including lands that indigenous peoples have come to occupy because of past relocations. This should be done with respect for indigenous peoples’ customs, traditions and land systems, including recognition of indigenous peoples’ own land tenure as a source of property and land rights. This may require measures for inter-State dialogues in instances where indigenous peoples reside across borders. States should abolish all laws, including those adopted during periods of colonization, that purport to legitimize, or have the effect of facilitating, the dispossession of indigenous peoples’ lands. 5. States should ensure that indigenous peoples that have retained ownership of the resources on their lands and territories have the right to extract and develop them, at least on the same basis as other landowners have the right to extract and develop resources from their lands. 6. States should apply the rights in the Declaration to reform their national, regional and local laws in such a way as to recognize indigenous peoples’ own customs, traditions and land tenure systems, in particular their collective ownership of lands, territories and resources. 7. States should ensure that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their spiritual relationship with the lands, territories and resources, including the waters and seas, in their possession and no longer in their possession but which they owned or used in the past. 8. States should use indigenous peoples’ own traditional dispute mechanisms, such as arbitration, when possible rather than litigate through the courts. 9. States should ensure effective access for indigenous peoples to relevant judicial procedures. 10. States should ensure that indigenous women have access on an equal basis with indigenous men to ownership and/or use of and control over their lands, territories and resources, including by revoking or amending discriminatory laws, policies and regulations, 1 18 A/HRC/15/35, A/HRC/18/42, A/HRC/21/55 and A/HRC/39/62.