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

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 2013 Constitutional Court ruling dismissing a constitutional challenge (amparo) brought by Guatemala’s Western Peoples’ Council of Mayan Organizations (CPO), which alleged that the 2012 amendments to the Mining Law violated indigenous rights to consultation in regards to mining activities on or impacting indigenous territories (see the Legal Action, entitled “2008-2013 Constitutional Challenges against Guatemalan Mining Laws [Marlin]”, for more detail).

The petition states that Guatemala 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 enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights. While the petition is not limited to mining operations or the Cerro Blanco or Marlin mines in particular, the action had 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, but no further developments were reported.