Annex I 157 on Minorities. The main instrument at the global level relating to indigenous peoples is the Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which has been ratified by only a small number of States. The draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, adopted by the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and transmitted by the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1993 to the Commission on Human Rights, is still under consideration by the Commission. 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 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). 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 (para. 7). Since the indigenous peoples very often have collective rights to 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 8.4 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.7 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. Reference can also be made here to general comment No. 23 (1994), adopted by the Human Rights Committee at its fiftieth session. It deals with article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the minority rights provision), and points out, in paragraph 3.1, the distinction between the right of peoples to selfdetermination and the rights of persons belonging to minorities, which are protected under article 27. 7