International metrics for health equity in indigenous peoples: The UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Globally, indigenous peoples confront inequities between their health and the health of majority/plurality populations, often in their own homelands. Achieving equity often requires addressing larger social determinants, including factors such as self-determination, as well as poverty, education, employment, housing, and other factors. Addressing individual level factors is largely ineffectual in the face of the underlying structure of inequities. To address structural determinants, tools outside of the usual domestic jurisprudence and legislation are often required. International human rights law provides some of these tools, particularly with the passage of the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. The Declaration, along with other international law instruments and jurisprudence interpreting these instruments, can serve as metrics to measure the progress of indigenous peoples towards achieving health equity. These metrics, in turn, can be applied domestically and internationally in seeking to attain better health, and social justice, for indigenous peoples.