GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO FREE, PRIOR AND INFORMED CONSENT
authority decisions that affect them should also be consulted on to obtain their
consent.
As the Court understands it, the duty to consult
and obtain consent, is ultimately founded on the
right of peoples to self-determination, linked to
the right to effective participation in decisions
that affect them and to the right to their life as
Peoples. In many cases, these rights are closely
linked to community ownership of territory.
However, the duty to consult does not necessarily,
in all cases, come from a restriction on the right
to ownership; rather it necessarily comes from
a restriction on the right to self-determination.
In the same vein: The Special Rapporteur notes with concern that some States have
effectively or purposefully taken the position that direct consultation with Indigenous
Peoples regarding natural resource extraction activity or other projects with
significant environmental impacts, such as dams, is required only when the lands
within which the activities at issue take place have been recognised under domestic
law as indigenous lands. Such a position is misplaced since, commensurate with
the right to self-determination and democratic principles, and because of the
typically vulnerable conditions of Indigenous Peoples, the duty to consult with
them arises whenever their particular interests are at stake, even when those interests
do not correspond to a recognised right to land or other legal entitlement. (Ob.
Cit.)
3.3 Who are the subjects to be consulted
Those entitled to the rights established in International Human Rights Law favouring
Indigenous Peoples are precisely those peoples, defined according to the stipulations
in Art. 1 of ILO Convention 169 (see above 2.2).
Under the criteria established in Convention 169, the application of indigenous
rights to determined human groups who correspond to the standards outlined in
Article 1 should not be restrictive with respect to the diverse names adopted by
traditional peoples in different countries.
Thus, the Ecuadorian Constitution recognises indigenous communes, communities,
peoples and nations, the Afro-Ecuadorian people and the Montubio people as the
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