2 5. Almost as a preliminary issue, may I briefly refer to the legal subjectivity of peoples in international law. In the present Sentence in the Moiwana Community versus Suriname case, the Court indicates, in the section on proven facts of the present Judgment, that "During the European colonization of present-day Suriname in the 17th Century, Africans were forcibly taken to the region and used as slaves on the plantations. Many of these Africans, however, managed to escape to the rainforest areas in the eastern part of Suriname's present national territory, where they established new and autonomous communities; these individuals came to be known as Bush Negroes or Maroons. Eventually, six distinct groups of Maroons emerged: the N'djuka, the Matawai, the Saramaka, the Kwinti, the Paamaka, and the Boni or Aluku. These six communities individually negotiated peace treaties with the colonial authorities. The N'djuka people signed a treaty in 1760 that established their freedom from slavery, a century before slavery was formally abolished in the region. In 1837, this treaty was renewed; the terms of the agreement permitted the N'djuka to continue to reside in their settled territory and determined the boundaries of that area. The Maroons generally - and the N'djuka in particular - consider these treaties still to be valid and authoritative with regard to their relationship with the State, despite the fact that Suriname secured its independence from the Netherlands in 1975"1. 6. Thus, more than two centuries before Suriname attained statehood, its Maroon peoples celebrated peace agreements with the colonial authorities, subsequently renewed, and thus obtained their freedom from slavery. And the Maroons, - the N'djuka in particular, - regard these treaties as still valid and authoritatives in the relations with the successor State, Suriname. This means that those peoples exercised their attributes of legal persons in international law, well before the territory where they lived acquired statehood. This reinforces the thesis which I have always supported, namely, that the States are not, and have never been, the sole and exclusive subjects of international law. 7. This purely inter-State outlook was forged by positivism, as from the Vattelian reductionism in the mid-XVIIIth century2, and became en vogue in the late XIXth century and early XXth century3, with the well-known disastrous consequences - the successive atrocities perpetrated in distinct regions of the world against human beings individually and collectively that marked the tragic and abhorrent history of the XXth century. However, since its historical . Paragraph 86(1) and (2). 1 . Found in the work by E. de Vattel, Le Droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliquée à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (1758); cf., e.g., E. Jouannet, Emer de Vattel et l'émergence doctrinale du Droit international classique, Paris, Pédone, 1998, pp. 255, 311, 318-319, 344 and 347. 2 . For a criticism of State-consent theories, reflecting the dangerous voluntarist-positivist conception of international law, cf. A.A. Cançado Trindade, "The Voluntarist Conception of International Law: A Re-Assessment", 59 Revue de droit international de sciences diplomatiques et politiques - Geneva (1981) pp. 201-240. 3