2013 IACHR Petition filed by Council of Mayan and Xinka Peoples [Escobal]

In September 2013, the Council of Mayan and Xinka Peoples filed a petition against Guatemala before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for systemic violation of the collective rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemala. This petition was filed in response to the Constitutional Court’s 2013 decision, dismissing an action brought by Guatemala’s Western Peoples’ Council of Mayan Organizations (CPO), which alleged that the 2012 amendments to the existing Mining Law violated indigenous rights to consultation in regards to mining activities on or impacting indigenous territories (see the Legal Action, entitled “Constitutional Challenges against Guatemalan Mining Laws”, for more detail).

The petition states that Guatemala has violated the following collective human rights: (1) the rights to participation, consultation, and consent; (2) equality before the law; and (3) the right to access to justice. It requests that the IACHR, among other things, determine Guatemala’s responsibilities in relation to the above rights, as enshired in the American Convention on Human Rights. While the petition is not limited to mining operations or the Cerro Blanco mine in particular, the action has important implications for these types of projects, which are often located on or impact indigenous territories.

According to an interview conducted as part of The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil project with a representative of the CPO, in 2015, the IACHR notified the Council that their petition had been assigned a file number. At the time of writing (September 2018), no further developments have been reported. Petitions filed at the IACHR are generally reviewed in chronological order and may take significant time before being considered. The role of the Commission is to investigate the situation and, where applicable, make recommendations to the subject state.