[2] The collective ownership style of most Indigenous Peoples conflicts with the modern global market and its continuous need for resources and land.
Without the requirement for consent, indigenous people cannot veto government projects and developments in their area that directly affect their lives and cultures.
FPIC allows Indigenous Peoples to have the right to self-determination and self-governance in national and local government decision-making processes over projects that concern their lives and resources.
[7] The International Labour Organization [1] requires a consultation to take place in a climate of mutual trust, and circumstances are considered appropriate if they create favourable conditions for reaching agreement and consent.
The majority of issues with the policy was the recruitment of the local facilitators, who were able to discuss the process in a language, but Indigenous Peoples understood there was mistrust towards them and a fear that they had been bribed.
No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.
[10] The role of Indigenous Peoples' FPIC in decisions about infrastructure or extractive industries developed on their ancestral domain is an issue in international law.
Asian Indigenous Peoples urged the UN to address the issue before the economic integration of ASEAN in 2015,[12] because of the human rights records of member states such as Myanmar and Laos, which are among the world's most repressive societies.
In nations such as New Zealand, domestic legislation such as the Resource Management Act 1991 refers to the need to consider in developments Maori relationship with land and water sites.
One of the most direct cases is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)[3], Article 19 states: "States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous Peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.
The need for FPIC has also been called upon by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) [6] which requires that no state shall make a decision concerning the rights of IP without their consent.
However, they are not legally-binding decisions but only recommendations [26] The World Bank [8] was one of the first multilateral financial institutions to create guidelines to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the 1980s, when it recognized that development negatively impacted their lives and cultures.
[27] Critics have questioned for the term "consultation" to be used as opposed to consent and state that to mean that IP cannot decline a project if they do not agree with it.
The third generation are so-called autonomous FPIC protocols that have predominantly been developed by Indigenous Peoples in Latin American countries, such as the Wampis in Peru, the Juruna in Brazil or the Embera Chami in Colombia, whose states have, despite ratifying ILO Convention 169, adopted regulations that fall far short of FPIC as defined in international law.
[31] This reference was made in the context of a so-called safeguard for REDD+, specifically the instruction to have "respect for the knowledge and rights of Indigenous Peoples and members of local communities" when undertaking REDD+ activities.
In 2009, the nation also included the duty to consult Indigenous Peoples in its constitution but in a much less radical version of the draft, which required consent for the exploration of all resource activities.
The result was large protests in La Paz for fear of damage to the vital river system, illegal logging, and the alteration of the habitats of endangered animals in the area.