Standing Under Fenua: Customary Rights and Human Rights in Postcolonial Tuvalu

The aim of this research was to obtain a better understanding of what causes the disconnection between law and custom in Tuvalu. Using qualitative methodology involving ethnographic and autoethnographic methods, this thesis argues that in Tuvalu, in the context of rights, Fenua is about the collective and rights are always-already duties, responsibilities and obligations. With Fenua human rights are anchored in the collective and in custom and often clashes with Tuvalu's system of judicial law. But, from the indigenous perspective, duties, responsibilities and obligations are not the 'other' side of rights; they ARE rights, and Fenua is all of it.