4 are vested in the entire people, according to N'djuka custom; community members consider such rights to exist in perpetuity and to be unalienable"9. 10. Human beings, individually and collectively, have emerged as subjects of international law. The rights protected disclose an individual and a collective or social dimensions, but it is the human beings, members of such minorities or collectivities, who are, ultimately, the titulaires of those rights10. This approach was espoused by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the unprecedented decision (the first pronouncement of the kind by an international tribunal) in the case of the Community Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni versus Nicaragua (2001), which safeguarded the right to communal property of their lands (under Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights) of the members of a whole indigenous community11. 11. In this respect, the endeavours undertaken in both the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS), along the nineties, to reach the recognition of indigenous peoples' rights through their projected and respective Declarations, pursuant to certain basic principles (such as, e.g., that of equality and non-discrimination), have emanated from human conscience. Those endeavours, - it has been suggested, - recognize the debt that humankind owes to indigenous peoples, due to the "historical misdeeds against them", and a corresponding sense of duty to "undo the wrongs" done to them12. 12. This particular development has, likewise, contributed to the expansion of the international legal personality of individuals (belonging to groups, minorities or human collectivities) as subjects of (contemporary) international law. International Human Rights Law in general, and this Court in particular, have contributed to such development. Under human rights treaties such as the American Convention, to identify the individuals belonging to given communities presents the advantage of conferring upon them the corresponding enforceable subjective rights13. In the present Judgment in the Moiwana Community case, the InterAmerican Court has rightly pointed out that the petitioners are the titulaires of the rights set forth in the Convention, and to deprive them of the faculty to submit their own pleadings would in fact constitute an "undue restriction" of "their condition as subjects of the . Paragraph 86(6). 9 . There are also international instruments, like the 1989 ILO Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO Convention n. 169, in force as from 05.09.1991), which appear to lay more emphasis, as far as duties are concerned, on the human collectivities as such. 10 . The Court pondered, in paragraph 141 of its Judgment (merits), that to the members of the indigenous communities (such as the present one) "the relationship with the land is not merely a question of possession and production but rather a material and spiritual element that they ought to enjoy fully, so as to preserve their cultural legacy and transmit it to future generations". 11 . A. Meijknecht, Towards International Personality: The Position of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in International Law, Antwerpen/Groningen, Intersentia, 2001, pp. 228 and 233. 12 . N. Rouland, S. Pierré-Caps and J. Poumarède, Direito das Minorias e dos Povos Autóctones, Brasília, Edit. UnB, 2004, pp. 228-229. 13