CCPR/C/132/D/2552/2015 State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 4.1 On 4 November 2019, 26 the State party requested the Committee to declare the communication inadmissible with regard to the community because, while domestic legislation recognizes collective rights, the Covenant safeguards individual rights only. Therefore, only violations against the authors can be examined. 4.2 In addition, the State party claims that the communication is inadmissible for the authors’ failure to exhaust domestic remedies, as their complaint at the domestic level related to environmental harm, which is not covered in the Covenant, and not to the rights referred to in articles 17 and 27 of the Covenant. 4.3 The State party further claims that the ordinary criminal procedure was not the appropriate remedy and should have been in complement to other, prior and less burdensome remedies at the administrative and civil levels. It submits that the appropriate remedies would have been a complaint with the Secretariat for the Environment (now called the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development), a civil possessory action and a remedy of amparo. 4.4 Regarding the alleged violation of article 17 of the Covenant, the State party submits that the facts have no bearing on the authors and that there is no evidence that agrochemicals have reached the indigenous territory or that the poisoning is due to contact with agrochemicals. The survey on the presence of glyphosate adduced by the authors was not validated by the State party. 4.5 The State party rejects the allegation of a violation of article 27 with regard to the community, as the Covenant does not recognize collective rights, and to the authors, who have not demonstrated having been affected personally. 4.6 The State party also rejects the allegation of a violation of article 2 (3) of the Covenant on account of the authors’ failure to exhaust the appropriate domestic remedies. 4.7 Lastly, the State party submits that it fulfils the rights of indigenous peoples insofar as a chapter of the Constitution is devoted to the issue, it adopted the Indigenous Communities Status Act (No. 904/81), the community’s territory has been established and recognized and its legal representative, in the person of Mr. Benito Oliveira, was officially recognized. Authors’ comments on the State party’s observations 5.1 In a submission dated 20 December 2019, the authors rejected the State party’s claim that the Committee is not competent to consider violations against an indigenous community, arguing that this is a restrictive approach that ignores trends in international human rights law and the State party’s own legislation. It is essential to recognize that indigenous communities are rights holders; to do otherwise would be to deny their identity. 5.2 The authors recall that, in the Committee’s view, the right to culture is exercised in social and cultural settings in community with the other members of the group.27 Furthermore, indigenous law has evolved so that indigenous groups, as collective subjects, are now themselves considered to be rights holders and are no longer seen merely as the sum of their members. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples was unequivocal about this in 2007, stating that indigenous peoples must thus be identified as subjects of collective rights that complement the rights of their individual members.28 Furthermore, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights noted in 2009 that indigenous groups should be granted rights holder status. 29 As from 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights stopped finding violations of the rights of members of indigenous peoples in recognition of the fact that relevant international law “recognizes rights to the peoples as collective subjects of international law and not only to members in view of the fact that ..., united by their 26 27 28 29 8 After three reminders from the secretariat to the State party (in February 2016, March 2017 and August 2018) and the publication of the Views in the case Portillo Cáceres et. al. v. Paraguay. General comment No. 23 (1994). A/HRC/6/15, para. 17. General comment No. 21 (2009), paras. 3 and 9. GE.22-15010