Ecuador constitutional court case: mining concessions in A’i Cofán of Sinangoe

Summary

In 2018, with the support and solidarity of other Indigenous nations and organizations aligned with the struggle, representatives of the A’L Cofán Sinangoe people filed a protective action against five government ministries and agencies, to suspend several mining concessions granted in the riverside areas of the Aguarico, Chingual, and Cofanes. In July 2018, a regional judge upheld the claim, charging the Ecuadorian state with a violation of the community’s right to free, prior and informed consultation, and referred to the right to territory, nature, and water. The judge suspend all mining operations in the territory.

Ecuador’s state authorities appealed the first-level sentence, but the A’i Cofán community responded by seeking the full revocation of the concessions, and a recognition that their fundamental rights (to health, water, and a clean environment) and the rights of nature were violated. The State’s appeal was rejected by the Appeals Chamber, which also declared that the rights of the A’L Cofán Sinangoe people to water, a healthy environment, culture, and territory were violated as well as rights of nature.

The case was appealed to the Constitutional Court, which used the case to establish binding jurisprudence on the question of indigenous communities’ right to prior informed consent. On February 4, 2022, the Constitutional Court issued its ruling that an Indigenous community’s right to free, prior and informed consultation was violated by oil projects and called for stronger protections to guarantee Indigenous communities’ rights to decide over extractive projects in their territories. As part of the ruling, the judges said indigenous communities must not only be consulted about extractive projects on or near their territory, but they must also give their consent to such projects. The ruling will immediately affect oil and mining projects across the country, as they must now seek the consent of indigenous communities who might be affected by their activities.

The A’I Cofán Sinangoe community is situated along the Aguarico River in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon and manages an ancestral territory of approximately 63,775 hectares.

Impact Statement

The ruling offers one of the strongest legal precedents in the world which upholds the rights of Indigenous peoples to decide on the futures of their ancestral territories. Across all the court rulings, from the provincial court to the Constitutional Court, the justice system also recognized the special value that ‘territory’ has for Indigenous peoples, and that the territory is not an object, but a subject of rights. The court’s ruling became known as the Sinangoe precedent.