Contesting Indigenous-Industry Agreements in Latin America

The principle that resource extraction should only occur on Indigenous land (owned or claimed) after a process of free, prior and informed consultation with affected communities first made its appearance on the international legal stage in the 1989 International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (Convention 169). Since then, this principle has become ubiquitous, endorsed in many statements of international law, in some countries? constitutions and/or constitutional jurisprudence around the world and in the policies of international financial investors and corporations. The related principle that consultation must occur ?in order to obtain the free, prior and informed consent? of affected Indigenous peoples has continued to gain acceptance since its articulation in the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In his 2013 final report to the UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya argued that there is a general rule in international law that extractive activities should not take place on the territories of Indigenous peoples without their free prior and informed consent. Notably though, the precise meaning of the right to consent remains controversial.