CIAO DATE: 03/2015
Spring 2014
Social Conflict & ILO 169 (PDF)
Rebecca Bintrim
Across the Andes, land- and natural resource-related confl ict has been increasing in the past 10 years, with only minor fl uctuations from year to year. In the past six years, those confl icts have occurred against a backdrop of discussion, adoption and refi nement of International Labour Organization Convention 169 (ILO 169) and consulta previa regulations to govern it. While not necessarily related, the long-term trends in confl ict and the adoption of consulta previa raise important questions. Can consulta previa address or contain long pent-up frustrations and confl icts? Or will the rising expectations they bring to communities, if the laws are imperfectly or subjectively implemented, lead to even more confl ict? The Charticle here shows the risks of the latter.
Oh! The Places You'll Go (PDF)
In most countries the process isn’t always clear or direct. Who does it, how to do it and how long it can take varies from country to country—a reflection of the vagueness of ILO 169 and the uneven development of government regulations across the hemisphere. To compare, here are the steps you would need to take in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru.
Country Study: Peru (PDF)
Cynthia Sanborn, Alvaro Paredes
During his 2011 presidential campaign, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala promised a new relationship between the Peruvian state and Indigenous peoples, in which the rights of the latter would be guaranteed and their participation in government would be treated as fundamental.
Country Study: Chile (PDF)
Jerónimo Carcelén Pacheco, Valentina Mir Bennett
While Chile has recognized and supported Indigenous rights through a variety of constitutional, legal and statutory norms, one of the most central—especially given the country’s extractive industry—is one of the least settled.
Country study: Guatemala (PDF)
Geisselle Sánchez, Silvel Elías
Although they constitute 40 percent of Guatemala’s population, Indigenous Guatemalans face great inequality in terms of access to health, education, housing and—most critically—political representation.
Country Study: Colombia (PDF)
Sebastian Agudelo, Diana María Ocampo
In Colombia’s 2010–2014 National Development Plan, President Juan Manuel Santos listed the mining sector as one of the five engines of the country’s economic growth, alongside infrastructure, housing, agriculture, and innovation. At the same time, the government recognized the need for regulatory, legal and policy instruments to make Colombia a regional powerhouse for mining and infrastructure.
Reducing the Financial Risk of Social Conflict (PDF)
Daniel M. Schydlowsky, Robert C. Thompson
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.
Business Responsibility to Respect Indigenous Rights (PDF)
Paloma Muñoz Quick
While numerous United Nations mechanisms1 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.
Contested Lands, Contested Laws (PDF)
Carlos Andrés Baquero Díaz
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.
Contradiction in International Law (PDF)
Angela Bunch
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.
Two Views of Consulta Previa in Guatemala: A View from Indigenous Peoples (PDF)
José Guadalupe Gómez
Guatemala is a plurinational country that 22 Maya nations, Xinka, Garifuna, and Ladino people jointly call home. The efforts to gain access to natural resources—often without the consent of the communities affected—constitute another stage in the long history of dispossession and repression of Maya peoples since colonization.
Two Views of Consulta Previa in Guatemala: A View from the Private Sector (PDF)
Cementos Progreso S.A.
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.
The Rise of Popular Consultations (PDF)
Diana Rodríguez-Franco
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.
Getting to the Table (PDF)
Diana Arbeláez-Ruiz, Daniel M. Franks
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.
Speaking a Common Language with Latin America: Economics (PDF)
Jose W. Fernandez
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.
International Cooperation or Gridlock? (PDF)
Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota
A shift of the global balance of power is under way. Emerging countries are increasingly playing significant roles on global issues, such as the global economy, trade, and investment, as well as in diplomacy and multilateral decision making.
Elections in Colombia (PDF)
Francisco Miranda Hamburger
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.
Ask the Experts: Consulta Previa (PDF)
Sonia Meza-Cuadra, Katya Salazar, César Rodríguez-Garavito, Roberto Junguito Pombo
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.
Dispatches: Guatemalan Migrants (PDF)
Michael McDonald
Fidelino Gómez remembers fondly the years he spent in Iowa, where his middle child was born. Standing outside his one-room wood home in his native Guatemala, Gómez, 34, thumbs through pictures he took of the Mississippi River, snowy Midwest winters and gatherings with family and friends. He recalls easier times. “We lived well,” Gómez says under the searing sun. “We could feed our children, pay our bills, and we still had money left over.”
Robert A. Boland
In the next two years, Brazil will host the three largest mega sports events in the world: the 2014 FIFA World Cup this summer, and then the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Rio in 2016. Other nations in the Americas and across the globe will be watching to see if Brazil’s hosting duties lead to broad-based, lasting growth, or are merely an expensive distraction. While history provides examples of both scenarios, hosting such megaevents can provide lasting and transformative value, including to developing nations.
Some of our hemisphere's emerging leaders in politics, business, civil society, and the arts (PDF)
Mari Hayman, Leani García
Arts Innovator: Francisca Valenzuela, Chile Civic Innovator: Drew Chafetz, United States Business Innovator: Marco Perlman Political Innovator: Mardoqueo Cancax
A snapshot of policy trends and successes in the region (PDF)
Robert Muse, Natalie Schachar, Charles Kamasaki
Travel Regulations: OFAC and Cuba, Currency: Argentina's Devaluation, Policy Advocacy: U.S. Immigration Reform
Rebecca Bintrim, Kate Brick, Leani García
World Cup Update, Crop Over, 10 Things to Do: Manaus, Brazil, Produce on Wheels: Baltimore’s Pop-Up Mobile Farmers’ Market, Ahora Sí Llego, From the Think Tanks
Ted Piccone, Jim Swigert, Ariel Fiszbein
Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana by Marc Frank,
Dangerous Liaisons: Organized Crime and Political Finance in Latin America and Beyond by Kevin Casas-Zamora (editor),
The Promise of Participation: Experiments in Participatory Governance in Honduras and Guatemala by Daniel Altschuler and Javier Corrales