The former candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador and environmental activist Yaku Pérez This Wednesday he presented a claim of unconstitutionality against the prior consultation manual presented by the president Daniel Noboa at the largest mining fair in the world (PDAC) in Toronto (Canada).
This manual to apply prior, free and informed consultation, to which indigenous peoples are entitled where investment projects such as extractive industry concessions are to be carried out, was issued by the Ministry of Energy and Mines on March 6 through a ministerial agreement.
For Yaku Pérez and a group of indigenous groups, this document transgresses the Constitution of Ecuador “by not having complied with the prerequisite of pre-legislative consultation with the indigenous peoples for whom it is intended, but also requires that the development of human rights constitutional provisions be done through an organic law.
“The ministerial agreement aims to carry out a non-binding prior consultation that could generate greater socio-environmental conflict”said in a statement Yaku Perez, who belongs to the Kichwa Kañari indigenous nationality.
The former presidential candidate also argued that he disregards the ruling of the Constitutional Court which annulled Decree 754, issued by the previous president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), with the intention of accelerating prior consultations and environmental consultations of investment projects.
Pérez recalled that this ruling by the highest court of guarantees in Ecuador established that it is the National Assembly be the one that regulates, through an organic law, prior, free and informed consultation, within a period of six months.
From the door of the Constitutional Court, the lawyer and environmental activist, who was a candidate for the Presidency in the 2021 and 2023 elections, assured in statements to journalists that the preparation of the organic law of prior consultation requires a pre-legislative consultation that, In your opinion, this manual is being skipped.
The former presidential candidate assured that Noboa went to the PDAC in Toronto to announce “that he is going to auction off the territories of Ecuadorians and was engaging with the gurus of the most powerful multinationals in the world.”
Within the framework of this mining fair, the Government of Ecuador signed six investment agreements for a combined value of 4.8 billion dollars for mining projects, a sector that in 2023 set a new export record with more than 3.3 billion dollars and It was the fourth highest earning item in the country’s export basket, only after oil, bananas and shrimp.
«The only thing President Noboa is going to do with this is stir up socio-environmental conflicts. There is already criminalization in many parts of the country.said Pérez, who compared the situation of environmental defenders with what they lived under the administration of the former president. Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
“At the social level, there is conflict where the only person responsible for the criminalization and persecution that occurs will be President Noboa.”he emphasized.
Among the groups that accompanied Pérez was the Federation of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations of Azuay, which opposes the Loma Larga mining project, run by the Canadian mining company Dundee Precious Metals, where the surrounding communities want to preserve the Quimsacocha lagoons, close to the city of Cuenca.
The president of this federation, Lauro Sigcha, warned about “the attack of this Noboa Government that wants to impose mining projects.”
«The people (of the province) of Azuay are willing to fight as long as it takes and we are going to continue until the last consequences. We’ve been like this for three decades. We ask the Ecuadorian people to understand the reaction of the people who are going to rise up, because because of these decrees we will fight., he anticipated. EFE (I)
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