Law and Policy Reform

We facilitate people-led, research-driven, human rights-based law and policy reform at national and international levels through collaborating with indigenous peoples and forest peoples, advocating with state actors, and engaging international bodies to develop stronger laws and policies that respect indigenous peoples’ and forest peoples’ collective rights across a variety of sectors, including agri-business, extractive industries, infrastructure, and conservation.

Developments in international human rights law recognising the collective rights of indigenous peoples and forest peoples have resulted in improvements in some national laws in some jurisdictions. This includes constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples and their rights and the customary tenure rights of forest peoples, the adoption of legislation and policy to give effect to those rights, and decisions of national courts upholding them. However, in most countries such measures have not been taken, while others have seen retrogressive steps by governments, often at the behest of business actors, to roll-back on rights safeguards or avoid implementing them. This implementation gap between international human rights law and national law and practice requires sustained legal advocacy for internationally recognised rights to be fully implemented at the local level. At the same time, other bodies of international law (trade, investment and environmental) are not adequately aligned with human rights law weakening its implementation in practice.

The aim of our work in this area is to ensure people-led, research-driven, human rights-based law and policy reform at national and international levels across a range of sectors, including conservation, extractive industries, agribusiness and related supply chains, and infrastructure and legal regimes spanning environmental, trade and investment law; as well as in global policy spaces (in conjunction with the Environmental Governance Programme) related to biodiversity and climate mitigation and in emerging areas of clean energy transition and nature markets. Central to this is ensuring that national law and policy is consistent with international law’s recognition of indigenous peoples’ and forest peoples’ self-determination, land, territory and resource, and cultural rights, and that indigenous peoples and forest peoples, including women and youth, can realize their right to effective participation in the development of national laws and policy that impacts on their rights.

At the national level, our law and policy reform work includes providing legal support to and collaborating with indigenous peoples and forest peoples and their organisations and partners in their development of proposals for legislative reform that are aligned with respect for their collective rights. It also entails insisting on good faith consultation to obtain FPIC for legislative or administrative measures that impact on those rights. It includes collaborating in the development of proposals for new legislation in contexts where there is no legal recognition of indigenous peoples and their land rights and assisting legal challenges to retrogressive reforms of legislation that safeguards those rights. An important component of law and policy reform is insisting that national legislation respect indigenous peoples’ and forest peoples’ own regulations and self-governance rights in accordance with their right to self-determination and the realisation of legal plurality, where customary law coexists with national and international law.

At the international level, our legal and policy reform work includes collaborating with indigenous  peoples and forest peoples, in conjunction with the Responsible Finance Programme, to provide human rights consistent legal input into standard setting processes of a range of institutions, including the United Nations, the European Union, the OECD and international financial institutions, as well as influencing the standard setting processes and oversight mechanisms of industry auditing and certification bodies. 

Our law and policy work overlaps with our access to justice work, as it involves bringing complaints to national courts and international human rights bodies in relation to the failure of States to comply with their human rights obligations when drafting laws and policies. A example of this work in 2024 was our engagement with partners at national and international level to challenge amendments to the Forestry Law in Peru that would lead to widespread violations of Amazonian indigenous peoples’ territorial rights.