Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 2.8: Importance of Free, Prior and Informed Consent
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having given consent to the project—is still useful in terms of
understanding how to engage in an FPIC process.
Chapter 2.6 reviewed how FPIC has increasingly become
an international norm through legal cases, both in individual
national jurisdictions and via the regional human rights systems.
The regional court decisions—especially in Saramaka v
Suriname and Endorois v Kenya—have created jurisprudence
that establishes that the right to land and FPIC are inherent,
regardless of whether indigenous peoples are recognized by
the state. They also confirm that decisions need to be made
in line with traditional methods of decision making. Finally,
in Chapter 2.7 the right to FPIC was established within
the UN Human Rights system, relating primarily to ILO
Convention 169 and the UNDRIP. Its application has been
clarified and strengthened by, among others, the Committee
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(CERD) in its General Comment 23. There was a review of
the input of indigenous organizations within the UN system to
this evolving standard. Finally, the concept cropped up again
with reference to certain campaigns, such as No Dirty Gold,
certain voluntary guidelines, like the Equator Principles, and
in complaint mechanisms such as the OECD Guidelines for
Multinational Enterprises.
Given that so much ground has already been covered, this
chapter is not seeking to repeat these points, but will primarily
review a few other examples of how the right to FPIC is
evolving. It will then explore some final points and conclusions
about FPIC, drawing heavily on the discussions at the
conference.
2.8.1 Other Precedents Regarding FPIC
Aside from the points raised above, FPIC also arises
in other UN processes and bodies. For instance, the Akwe:
Kon guidelines for the implementation of Article 8j of the
Convention on Biological Diversity recognizes FPIC as being
of fundamental importance in the context of the protection