Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)

I thank the witnesses for their presentations and for the work they have been doing in their specific actions and in their advocacy as they have described. It is important to acknowledge from social rights and environmental perspectives that indigenous peoples occupy a small portion of the world, but a huge portion of the world's biodiversity and environmental richness has been in areas where indigenous peoples have been the stewards of that land. That is a testament to the contribution indigenous peoples have been making to the understanding of what matters, what things are important, and what needs to be valued and protected.

I want to raise two matters. First, what needs to shift in the negotiations happening next week and the next one or two negotiations building to 2027? Dr. O'Connell mentioned the widening of the treaty to cover all businesses rather than the large corporations. Has that been used as an excuse to have weaker provisions? Is there any need to push back and say that stronger provisions are needed regarding larger corporations?

Second, it seems that Europe needs to move the dial on the enforceability issue. Dr. O'Connell might comment on how the enforceability was weakened in the omnibus legislation. I know that I and others were following these negotiations for years. We finally came up with something. The Minister, Deputy Dara Calleary, and others were there negotiating it, and suddenly, in two months, we have this fast-tracked omnibus Bill that seems to take an axe to much of it. Considering some of those components of enforceability, how do we move this past an aspiration?

I ask Mr. Jiménez Villalta and others about the importance of enforceable measures. He has described specifically the use of legal instruments or intimidation through legal instruments by corporations to criminalise indigenous peoples on their own land. He mentioned that, even with the current government in Guatemala being more willing, there is a difficulty. Perhaps he might comment on things like the investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS cases. I know investor-state cases have been taken against Guatemala to perhaps intimidate governments from taking regulatory steps and measures and even enforcing their own laws against corporations. We know those kinds of international instruments are being used in a way by companies to make it harder for countries to enforce their own laws, yet we do not have a comparable international instrument which is a binding treaty and enforceable. How important is a counterbalance to the kinds of instruments that are being used and abused, sadly, particularly by mining and extractive industries?

Will Mr. Jiménez Villalta and Ms Quijano, if she wants to speak on this, comment on his concerns about the near future, particularly in a period when it seems that mining has a competitive rush on minerals and precious minerals? That is a sector that maybe needs specific and strong measures and actions, and accountability where the minerals are being used, which we know is often Europe. France and other countries are holding seminars about where they are going to take the minerals from. It is important to track that and ensure that we have accountability at the point of use of these precious minerals and not just at the point of extraction.