5 17. The judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community Case contributes to the recognition of certain specific juridical relationships that together make up the body of law shared by a good portion of the inhabitants of the Americas, a body of law being increasingly accepted by and recognized in domestic laws and international instruments. The topic of this judgment, and by extension the judgment itself, is at that point where civil laws and economic, social and cultural laws converge. In other words, it stands at that junction where civil law and social law meet. The American Convention, applied in accordance with the interpretation that it authorizes and in accordance with the rules of the Law of Treaties, must be and is a system of rules that affords the indigenous people of our hemisphere the same, certain protection that it affords to all people of the American countries who come under the American Convention’s umbrella. Sergio García-Ramírez Judge Manuel E. Ventura-Robles Secretary