Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A research consortium documents its FPIC process with each participating Indigenous community before commencing data collection.
- Is an instance
A community exercises its right to withdraw consent partway through a project, and the research team adjusts accordingly.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Standard institutional ethics consent forms targeting individual participants do not, on their own, satisfy FPIC at the community level.
- Not an instance
Notification of communities about activities already underway is not FPIC, which requires consent in advance.
Editorial commentary
FPIC is articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and is widely recognised in international human rights and data governance frameworks. In research contexts, FPIC requires meaningful engagement with relevant communities before research commences, ongoing communication and the option to withdraw consent, and respect for community decision-making structures. FPIC is a process, not a single event, and is closely connected with cultural protocols, benefit sharing, and CARE-aligned practice.
Origins in UNDRIP
UNDRIP, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007, is the primary international instrument articulating FPIC. Provisions commonly cited as its FPIC core include Article 10 (no forced relocation without free, prior and informed consent), Article 19 (states to consult and cooperate to obtain FPIC before adopting legislative or administrative measures affecting Indigenous Peoples), Article 29 (FPIC before storage or disposal of hazardous materials on Indigenous lands), and Article 32 (FPIC before approval of projects affecting Indigenous lands, territories, or resources). UNDRIP is a declaration, not a binding treaty, but it is treated as the reference articulation of FPIC across national research-ethics and data-governance frameworks.
FPIC as a collective process, not individual consent
FPIC differs structurally from individual informed consent in human-subjects research: it is sought from a community, nation, or its recognised representative body — not (only) from each individual participant — and it addresses the research relationship and its use of collective knowledge, land, or data as a whole, in addition to whatever individual consent each participant separately provides. A study can have full individual informed consent from every participant and still lack FPIC if it was never brought to, or approved by, the community’s own governance structures.
How FPIC connects to CARE, OCAP, and national frameworks
FPIC is a consent principle; the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (developed by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, GIDA) and Canada’s OCAP Principles (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession — First Nations Information Governance Centre) are the data-governance frameworks that operationalise consent-adjacent rights once research or data collection is underway. In Canada, the Tri-Council Policy Statement’s TCPS2 Chapter 9 is the specific research-ethics-board compliance mechanism through which community engagement and agreement — closely related to, though not formally labelled, FPIC — is reviewed and required for research involving First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. These frameworks are complementary, not interchangeable, and a research office should not assume satisfying one automatically satisfies the others.
References
- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007)
- GIDA, CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (2019)
Related: Indigenous Data Sovereignty · Benefit-sharing agreement · Traditional Knowledge (TK) · CARE Principles vs. FAIR Principles.
Also known as
FPIC
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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