A/HRC/29/25 46. Furthermore, perceived leaders of movements or protests are often subjected to particularly egregious violations of their rights, such as disappearances and arbitrary killings in an effort by States and corporations to intimidate and thus disrupt organized efforts to resist exploitation activities. In Orissa, India, anti-mining campaigners have been killed, and 42 women defenders at the forefront of demonstrations against dams were jailed for protesting (see A/HRC/19/55/Add.1, para. 76). 47. The Special Rapporteur has received numerous reports concerning violations of the rights of human rights defenders, activists and community members who exercised their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly in the context of natural resource exploitation. Civil society activists in countries such as Colombia (A/HRC/28/85, case COL 7/2014), the Philippines (A/HRC/27/72, case PHL 2/2014) and Thailand (A/HRC/24/21, case THA 3/2013), to name a few, have paid with their lives for leading advocacy campaigns against natural resource exploitation operations. According to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, human rights defenders working on extractive and the construction and development projects in the Americas were the subject of most communications to her and faced the highest risk of death as a result of their human rights activities (see A/HRC/19/55, para. 71). In South Africa, over 30 miners at the Marikana Mine were shot and killed by police during a strike, although the workers’ action was not entirely peaceful (see A/HRC/22/67 and Corrs.1 and 2, ZAF cases 3/2012). In Guatemala, where agriculture provides the main livelihood for the majority of the population, competition between landowners, farmers, indigenous communities and their associations and large-scale commercial agricultural and mining projects has resulted in the criminalization of social movements and their claims (see A/HRC/26/29/Add.1, paras. 193– 199, and A/HRC/10/12, para. 34–35). 48. It is worth emphasizing that peaceful protests are typically a measure of last resort, when scope for effective engagement with the authorities or businesses is otherwise limited. In some cases, communities may have gone through consultation processes only to find them, from their perspective, improperly conducted, compromised, corrupt or otherwise unsatisfactory. In other cases, agreements reached between the parties may not be not adhered to. For example in Myanmar, protests against the Monywa Copper Project were allegedly sparked in 2012 when the corporation involved in the mining operations reneged on an agreement with affected villagers to halt operations pending negotiations with them. Police later moved in to disperse the peaceful protest camps using inordinate force (see A/HRC/25/64, para. 28). A failure by a company to abide by a contract signed with the owners of community territory in La Sierrita de Galeana in Mexico also resulted in a peaceful protest that was violently dispersed, allegedly under the instructions of company officials.21 49. Unfortunately, despite their potential for mitigating the underlying reasons for many peaceful protests in the context of natural resource exploitation, consultation mechanisms are often overlooked or employed inadequately. International human rights law and standards mandate that free, prior and informed consent is a prerequisite for the exploitation of natural resources in areas owned by indigenous peoples. As recommended in the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, due diligence, including conducted through human rights impact assessments before the start of the project, is key for ensuring that exploitation activities do not violate the rights of affected communities. 50. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur welcomes the launch by Colombia of new public policy guidelines on human rights and business in July 2014. 22 The guidelines are 21 22 Submission by the Project of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, November 2014, pp. 10–11. Response to the questionnaire. 15