How EDLC Can Help with Local Votes

Communities and others considering holding local votes on proposed resource development projects may be able to receive additional help from EDLC.

Information and Advice

EDLC has performed extensive research on local votes and has additional resources beyond those that appear on this website. We are available to discuss the whole range of issues concerning local votes.

Pro bono legal assistance on issues related to local votes

Communities may need legal assistance if their efforts to hold a local vote (or the legal effect of a vote already taken) are challenged in a lawsuit. For example, the local vote organized by the community of Sipicapa in Guatemala was challenged in a lawsuit that was ultimately decided by the country's Supreme Court.

Communities themselves sometimes bring lawsuits to challenge government decisions on local votes, as in the Sipacapa case, where a complaint has now been filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Citizens in Costa Rica are considering legal action in response to the government's apparent decision to construct a dam despite the overwhelming opposition of affected communities who participated in a local vote on the project.

EDLC may be able to help in both types of situations, as well as on other legal issues relating to local votes, through EDLC's law firm pro bono program. See also Assisting in Litigation.

Pursuing Remedies for Communities

Whether a community holds a local vote or not, it may consider pursuing other remedies arising under international human rights law. See Votes and Human Rights Remedies. Situations involving unwanted resource development projects frequently raise closely related human rights issues, such as indigenous land claims and violations of other indigenous rights, and/or violations of environmental human rights. See Helping Communities.

For example, a number of communities facing unwanted resource development projects have sought and obtained the issuance of precautionary (emergency) measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Some have gone on to convince the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that their land rights and other human rights have been violated by the project at issue. EDLC may be help pursue these remedies through EDLC's law firm pro bono program.

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We believe that community consultations are the use of reason, the use of a group of people’s word of honor…

- Daniel Pascual, Director, Committee for Peasant Union, a Guatemalan indigenous association