A/68/317 years of advocacy and struggle by indigenous peoples themselves. The norms of the Declaration substantially reflect indigenous peoples’ own aspirations, which after years of deliberation have come to be accepted by the international community. The Declaration’s wording, which has been endorsed by Member States, explicitly manifests a commitment to the rights and principles embodied in the Declaration. It is simply a matter of good faith that States adhere to that expression of commitment to the norms that indigenous peoples themselves have advanced. 67. In sum, the significance of the Declaration is not to be diminished by assertions of its technical status as a resolution that in itself has a non-legally binding character. The Special Rapporteur reiterates that implementation of the Declaration should be regarded as political, moral and, yes, legal imperative without qualification. B. The Declaration’s foundations in equality and human rights 68. Equally debilitating to the Declaration are characterizations of the instrument as granting a status to indigenous peoples of privilege over other groups, a characterization the Special Rapporteur has heard expressed by State officials and others in positions of influence in numerous local settings outside the diplomatic arena. Such characterizations of the Declaration implicitly question its fairness, thereby undermining its legitimacy. 69. Far from elevating indigenous peoples over others, the Declaration, in article 2, aims to ensure that indigenous peoples and individuals are equal to all other peoples and individuals. Equality and non-discrimination are bedrock principles of the Declaration, in accordance with the United Nations human rights regime more generally, as made clear in the Declarations preamble (inter alia, paras. 2, 5 and 22) and in several of its provisions (inter alia, art. 1, 2 and 17). To ascribe to the Declaration any design of privilege or superiority is a gross distortion of its true character. 70. While the Declaration does articulate standards that are specific to indigenous peoples, it does not fundamentally create for indigenous peoples new substantive rights that others do not enjoy, as pointed out previously by the Special Rapporteur (A/64/338, para. 47). Rather, it recognizes for them the human rights that they should have enjoyed all along as part of the human family, contextualizes those rights in the light of their particular circumstances and characteristics, in particular their communal bonds, and promotes measures to remedy the rights’ historical and systemic violation. The interconnectedness of all human rights and their universality, along with their propensity to give rise to context-specific prescriptions, is illustrated by the Declaration’s articulation of norms that are, at the same time, grounded in universal human rights but specific to indigenous peoples. The interrelationships between universal rights of equality, self-determination, cultural integrity, property, development, and social and economic welfare, understood in the specific context of indigenous peoples, define a range of specific indigenous peoples’ rights that are articulated in the Declaration. 71. In keeping with this context specificity, the basic normative justification of the Declaration is stated in paragraph 6 of the preamble, in which it is acknowledged that indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and 18/22 13-42710