ฌ 1.1 Principles and concepts from international law aspect 1.1.1 Existence and status of “community rights” under international law According to the international documents on human rights of which Thailand is member, definition or recognition of the community rights is not clearly stated. Under most legal binding documents, the word “ community” is used to guarantee “ rights of individuals” to participate in their communities or “freedom to participate” rather than the “rights of community” as independent rights separating from “ rights of individuals” . However, under non- legally binding document on human rights, there is the recognition of “rights of indigenous peoples” as provided in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The recognition of such rights is considered as community rights which apply for specific group of people who are indigenous peoples only. Community rights for general group are not yet recognized and defined . Additionally, among the four main international documents on environment, namely, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the 2002 Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development, and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, none of them mentions “ community rights” directly, but only states “ communities” , “ local communities” and “ traditional indigenous communities” . These international documents on environment actually support all States to promote roles of traditional indigenous communities and local communities as one of sustainable mechanisms in protecting the natural resources and environment, by imposing “duties” on the communities to conserve the natural resources and environment in their locality, rather than acknowledging the “ communities rights” . It does not, therefore, put more weight on “protecting rights of communities” than “protecting the environment”. 1 . 1 . 2 “ Rights of community” differ from “ rights of traditional indigenous peoples” and “rights of minorities” Since the “ rights of traditional indigenous peoples” and the “ rights of minorities” are different from the “ community rights” , they should not be interchangeably used. Understanding the dissimilar ways of recognizing such rights might be useful. Through the comparison, some appropriate methods can be borrowed to apply for protecting the community rights only if it does