Deliberating Justice: Indigenous Peoples, the World Bank and the Principle of Free Prior Informed Consent

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,6, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: This thesis aims to reflect upon some of the bigger questions of international development. It investigates a general relationship between the World Bank vis a vis demands made by indigenous peoples, namely questioning of how to advance development goals in ways that uphold the justice needs of minorities such as indigenous peoples, further how to achieve a just balance between national prosperity and minority survival, and more broadly, how to further balance the complexities of global, local and national interests. This thesis seeks a stronger middle ground between the Bank and indigenous peoples and focuses, on the importance of deliberation, in general, and the principle of free prior informed consent, in particular. The argument put forward here is normative and envisages emancipating from the singularity of the modern development paradigm in opening a deliberative space that provides for diversity and difference to flourish instead. Here specifically acknowledging indigenous peoples values and interests as equally important in development, this thesis supports a deliberate and affirmative approach to justice. This of course does not mark the prevailing top-down, state-centric and neo-liberal development paradigm as malign, rather it envisages exchanging its power base for bottom-up participatory deliberation.