Of all the rights that are elaborated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the right to self-determination, as recognized in articles 3 and 26, is the most challenging to implement.
Self-determination is the foundation from which all the rights of Indigenous Peoples derive. The founders of Land is Life made this explicit when they drafted the following Vision Statement at the gathering where our organization was founded in a forested valley outside of Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Our vision is simple: We live for the day when Indigenous Peoples around the world are able to practice self-determination; when our human, economic, social, cultural, political and territorial rights are recognized and respected; when we are free to speak our languages, maintain our sacred traditions and continue the work of caring for our ancestral homelands.
We work towards the day when Indigenous Peoples are recognized as valued members of the international community, and we are allowed to assume our rightful role as partners in the search for a more equitable, just, and sustainable world.
For the past 32 years, we have worked to realize this vision by supporting Indigenous Peoples through a diversity of innovative and effective programs aimed at advancing rights, protecting territories and resources, strengthening governance institutions, building local economies, and ensuring robust and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in national, regional, and international fora where decisions are made that affect their lives, territories, and livelihoods.
Our program on Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is one of the unique ways in which we are supporting Indigenous Peoples to exercise their self-determination. FPIC is a mechanism that is fundamental for the realization of all the rights elaborated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The right to FPIC originates from the right to self-determination (article 3 of the UNDRIP); the right to freely pursue economic, social, and cultural development. It’s status as a right has been affirmed by numerous human rights bodies, as well as jurisprudence from both national and regional courts. According to a study of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Free, Prior and Informed consent (FPIC) is “a human rights norm grounded in the fundamental rights to self-determination and to be free from racial discrimination guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.” Many who implement projects and programs in Indigenous Peoples’ territories – governments, big NGO’s, the private sector – claim to have received the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the affected Peoples. Unfortunately, more often than not, these FPIC processes are not carried out “in good faith” or “through [Indigenous Peoples’] own representative institutions”, as stated in the UNDRIP , and reaffirmed in paragraphs 3 and 20 of the Outcome Document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples .
Given the challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples in realizing their right to FPIC, Land is Life began working with Indigenous communities to development their own community-led protocols for the proper implementation, monitoring and review of Free, Prior and Informed Consent processes. Since founding this program, we have worked with the Kichwa People of Sarayaku (Ecuador); the Kichwa community of Serena (Ecuador); the Tacana People of the Madre de Dios River (Bolivia) and; the Ogiek People of the Mao Forest (Kenya) to develop Community Protocols. We are now working to expand this program to communities in other socio-cultural regions, and to strengthen processes for the legal recognition of community FPIC Protocols in Kenya, Bolivia and Ecuador, to ensure the States’ mandatory compliance with the Protocols.
Change always happens from the bottom up, and these Protocols are an essential tool for communities as they strive to engage governments, the private sector, NGO’s, bilateral and multilateral development agencies, and all others who are impacting their right to self-determination. Achieving self-determination is not simply a matter of funding, or receiving land titles, it is a political struggle. And we encourage donors to not shy away from this struggle, because only when Indigenous Peoples achieve self-determination will we be able to meet the environmental, climatic, social, and economic challenges that the world is facing today.
Sarayaku FPIC Protocol Development meeting photos.
Credit: David Suarez/Land is Life
Ogiek FPIC meeting photo. Credit: Casey Box/Land is Life
