This article was originally published in Vol. 21, No. 2, Winter 2022.The central issue facing the world’s first nations was historically and remains today the question of access to and use of the territory they occupy. Peoples’ migrations, occupations, and colonization have continued as part of human relations for more than 60,000 years. Over this time, relations between emerging nations featured one nation being absorbed by another, some becoming associated through social mixing and independent nations remaining independent from one another. Peoples achieve these cultural processes through forced absorption, cultural exchange, or recognition of the equality of power. These changes continue today, except thatthe establishment of permanent boundaries around nations or combined nations has forced the need for structures and processes for mediating relations between nations that were forced inside bounded areas of states. These circumstance demands determining whether nations will remain “absorbed, associated or become independent of modern states. Nations’ claims over their territories come into conflict with States’ claims over the same regions—a circumstance exacerbated by the economic and business interests of transnational corporations and commercial enterprises seeking to profit from the location of nations’ territories or access to undeveloped subsurface raw materials, lands, forests, surface minerals and soils supportive of agriculture.Nations and States constitute the primary political systems of human organization required under modern state-based international law to implement the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). However, without a formal and enforceable mechanism to carry out international and domestic pledges intended to implement nations’ rights to “consent,” the imbalance of power between nations and their counterparts in states and corporations leaves nations depending on their opponent’s implementation is possible.This article discusses subjects of concern between nations, states, transnational corporations, and commercial businesses. Given limited FPIC details expressed in state-based laws and agreements, neither states nor nations can be assured of an acceptable and defined process for reaching mutual agreements or methods for enforcing commitments made by consenting parties. Defining the establishment and functions of intergovernmental or non-governmental monitoring mechanisms that may serve as agencies for facilitating mediation or negotiations between nations and states, I discuss these in detail.
Rudolph Rÿser (Sat,) studied this question.