Sure, I'm happy to continue the conversation.
I think that starting back in the early 2000s the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues had a study on free, prior and informed consent that set out a lot of the standards about what sort of information..., what “free” means, and what we are talking about with “prior” and “consent”. I think this was then followed up with the study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2018, when they studied a human rights-based approach to free, prior and informed consent.
On this idea of a veto, they clarify that free, prior and informed consent is really about, again, protecting the rights that we're recognizing broadly in the UN declaration, so that when we talk about consent, the expert mechanism does state that there are circumstances—and they're set out in the UN declaration—when states are obligated to get indigenous peoples' free, prior and informed consent, and that the element of consent includes the idea that indigenous peoples do have a right to say no, that they may withhold consent following an assessment and conclusion that the proposal is not in their best interest, and that withholding consent is expected to convince the other party not to take the risk of proceeding with a proposal.
The expert mechanism has also said that arguments of whether indigenous peoples have a veto in this regard appear largely to detract from and undermine the legitimacy of the “free, prior and informed” concept.
We're really about including indigenous peoples in the process to ensure that we're upholding rights or understanding how their rights may be impacted by various projects.