Pastoralists are peoples: Key issues in advocacy and the emergence of pastoralists’ rights

This article deals with the rights-based approach to development that in the last decade has informed discourse on pastoralism. It focuses on the organisations that have engaged in pastoral advocacy at global scale, considering the dynamic conceptions of development, human rights and policy that provide their cultural and operative background. It outlines the convergence of indigenous rights with the core challenges of pastoralism, and the emergence of the new concept of ‘pastoralist’ rights’, eventually considered as a separate domain. It argues that the mobility paradigm to pastoral development may not by itself provide an adequate answer to the problems of the pastoral communities, unless explicit consideration is paid for the collective and procedural rights recognised under the international human rights framework.