The Peruvian economy has experienced exceptional growth in the past 10 years, with its GDP expanding at an average yearly rate of 6.5 percent. Much of this growth is due to the mining sector, which in 2012 accounted for 9.6 percent of Peru's GDP, 1.3 percent of its employment and 56.9 percent of its exports.
While numerous United Nations mechanisms have addressed the impact of business activities on Indigenous rights, it was only in 2011—with the UN Human Rights Council's unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights—that the role of businesses in respecting, or abusing, these rights was officially acknowledged.
The right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), or consulta previa, has expanded throughout South America. Nine states have ratified the International Labour Organization's Convention 169 (ILO169)— the principal treaty regarding consulta previa. But regulations created by four of those states— Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador—contradict the commitments they accepted when they ratified the treaty, in effect violating the right of Indigenous people to be consulted on administrative and legislative measures that could directly affect them.
Indigenous peoples' control over natural resources continues to be one of the most controversial issues in international law. Numerous international human rights treaties recognize Indigenous communities' right to be consulted over the use of resources on or beneath their communal lands. But international law tends to consider third parties' exploitation of natural resources on Indigenous land to be legal—as long as Indigenous rights to consultation, participation and redress, among other rights, are met.
Guatemala ratified International Labour Organization Convention 169 (ILO 169) on June 5, 1996, more than a year after Guatemala's Constitutional Court, the highest court in the country, ruled in Document 199-95 that the Convention did not contradict the Guatemalan Constitution.
On a hot Sunday morning in July 2013, the inhabitants of Piedras, a small municipality in the Colombian Andes, gathered to decide whether large-scale mining activities should be permitted in their territory.
Mining is a lot more than complex technology, logistics and finance. While mineral extraction does require an amazing array of machinery, computers, and processes for transporting and treating the materials, it is just as much a social project that is negotiated and conducted within a social context.
United States-Latin American relations have often suffered from a disconnect. While we stress security issues, the region's leaders speak of poverty reduction and trade. They resent being seen as afterthoughts to U.S. policies focused elsewhere. As a result, the region is sporadically open to new suitors, such as Spanish investors 15 years ago, or the Chinese today.
On May 25, 32 million Colombians will vote in one of the most important presidential elections in the nation's recent history—an election that will turn on the issue that remains Colombia's greatest challenge: putting an end to the armed conflict.
Sonia Meza-Cuadra, Katya Salazar, César Rodríguez-Garavito, and Roberto Junguito Pombo
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Governments aim to make decisions that will improve the economic and social development and welfare of their citizens. But historically, decisions affecting Indigenous and tribal people's culture, ancestral lands and habitats have too often been made without their participation. ilo 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples seek to redress this situation.