GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO FREE, PRIOR AND INFORMED CONSENT
Self-consultation has been defined as a legitimate process, in which a people
discusses its principal problems and takes a stand on them as an Indigenous People,
not as a board of directors or a representative assembly, but as a people, men and
women, youth, adults and the elderly.33 It is a mechanism communities resort to
in the face of States' omission or reticence to fully comply with their obligation
to consult.
Community self-consultations undertaken in Latin America in recent years regarding
extractive projects in their territories have followed diverse procedures. For example,
in Peru, on June 6, 2010, the National Achuar Federation of Peru (FENUP)
conducted a process of self-consultation in 37 Achuar communities near the river
basins of Pastaza, Huituyacu, Manchari, Huasaga and Setuchi, regarding three
transcendental questions: (i) if the community wished to force the Peruvian State
to recognise their ownership over their ancestral territory, considering the integrity
of their natural resources, including soil, sub-soil and forest canopy resources, and
over water resources or sources in the indigenous territory; (ii) if the community
wished to ban the operation of oil and mining concessions that impact the life,
health and peace of the Achuar People, in ancestral Achuar territory, located around
the basins of the Pastaza, Morona, Huasaga, Huituyacu, Manchari, Setuchi and
Anas rivers; and (iii) if the community supports the withdrawal of the Talisman
oil company from Achuar ancestral territory, which spans oil blocks 64 and 101.
Community members over the age of 14 were consulted and the result was that,
in the basins of the Huasaga, Manchari and Pastaza rivers, the population supported
the three propositions unanimously, with 707 votes against 0 on each proposition.
Meanwhile, in the Huituyacu and Setuchi basins, the vote was, on average, 722
votes in favour of the three propositions and 2 votes against (Racimos de
Ungurahui, 2010).
In this case, the decision to conduct a self-consultation came from the representative
organisation of the Achuar of Peru, and the format comes from their own assembly
proceedings, which have been adopted by this people to discuss, analyse and make
internal decisions.
In contrast, in the municipal community consultation conducted on June 18, 2005
by the community authorities of the Sipacapa municipality in Guatemala, regarding
the open-pit mining exploitation of the Marlin mine, the procedure was regulated
by consultation rules that even established that the result of the consultation was
obligatory for the municipality, according to the Political Constitution, ILO
33 http://racimosdeungurahui.com/page16.html
32