A/HRC/9/9 page 14 upon, the provisions of ILO Convention No. 169, as well as with other developments, including the interpretations of other human rights instruments by international bodies and mechanisms. As the most authoritative expression of this consensus, the Declaration provides a framework of action towards the full protection and implementation of these rights. IV. MECHANISMS TO OPERATIONALIZE THE RIGHTS AFFIRMED IN THE DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES A. States 44. The seventh preambular paragraph of the Declaration emphasizes the “urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples”. Like any other human rights instrument does, the Declaration confers a pivotal role to State actors in the promotion and protection of the rights affirmed therein. The central role of the State is further reinforced by the essentially reparative orientation of the instrument, which requires States to take affirmative measures to attack the systemic problems that indigenous peoples face in the enjoyment of their human rights in ways that are consistent with their specific cultural characteristics and their own expressed wishes. The call for positive or special measures 45. The Declaration requires that “States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take the appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to achieve the ends of this Declaration” (art. 38). This general mandate is further elaborated on in other provisions, with specific affirmative measures required from States in connection with almost all the rights affirmed in the Declaration. 46. The kind of State action required to operationalize the rights affirmed in the Declaration thus entails an ambitious programme of legal and policy reform, institutional action and reparations for past wrongs, involving a myriad of State actors within their respective spheres of competence. The former chair of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Ms. Erica-Irene Daes, described this process as “belated State-building”, a process “through which indigenous peoples are able to join with all the other peoples that make up the State on mutually-agreed upon and just terms, after many years of isolation and exclusion”.27 This spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding between States and indigenous peoples is a theme throughout the Declaration, including in the provision which underlines the value of historical and modern treaties or compacts as mechanisms to advance relations of cooperation between indigenous peoples and States (art. 37). 27 Erica-Irene A. Daes, “Some Considerations on the Right of Indigenous Peoples to Self-Determination”, 3 Transn’l L. & Contemp. Probs. 1, 9 (1993).