Community Consultations of Good Faith
The Community Consultations of Good Faith are mechanisms for citizen participation - a response by indigenous communities to the negative impact of extractive industries to their ancestral territories - arising from the absence of a Law of Prior Consultation in Guatemala. Around 75 Good Faith Consultations have been carried out, involving more than 800 000 people (data 2005-2015). However, many of them have been considered invalid by the Central Government. The first took place in 2005, in the Municipality of Sipacate, in opposition to the Marlin project, a gold and silver extraction mine in the ancestral territories of the indigenous Maya, Mam and Sipakapense communities. Although this consultation was not binding (it was declared unconstitutional), and the Constitutional Court stated that only the Central Government could conduct consultations on the management of natural resources, some international organizations said that it represented the starting point for other consultation processes. Most of these consultation processes have resulted in fierce opposition to mining projects, and some, such as Huehuetenango, have declared certain areas of the region as "mining-free zones".
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- sporadic
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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