A/HRC/21/55 (a) As part of their duty to protect against business-related human rights abuse, States must take appropriate steps to ensure, through judicial, administrative, legislative or other appropriate means, that when such abuses occur, those affected, including indigenous peoples, have access to remedy; (b) In determining appropriate access to remedy for indigenous peoples, reference should be made to articles 27, 28, 32 and 40 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; (c) A critical barrier to access to remedy for indigenous peoples is their exclusion from access to effective judicial mechanisms. To overcome this, particular attention should be paid to the rights and needs of indigenous peoples at each stage of the remedial process: access, procedures and outcome; (d) Grievance mechanisms may be mediation based and should be culturally appropriate and rights based. In the establishment of grievance mechanisms, traditional indigenous mechanisms, such as justice circles and restorative justice models involving elders and other traditional knowledge keepers, should be taken into account where so sought by the indigenous peoples in question; (e) Special measures should be implemented in relation to indigenous peoples to overcome barriers to access, including those relating to a lack of awareness of the grievance mechanism, language, literacy, costs, physical location and fears of reprisal. B. Policy 1. Rationale 29. The importance of ensuring the participation of indigenous peoples in decisionmaking with respect to extractive activities is sourced not only in human rights and pragmatism. It is also derived from an historical understanding of indigenous peoples‟ experiences of oppression and colonization including, in many cases, forced assimilation, theft of their lands, territories and resources, profound discrimination and illegitimate, often including force, assertions of political control over them. The potential for extractive activities to continue to exacerbate those historical disadvantages is very real given the often very significant power imbalances, such as in financial resources, as has been borne out by indigenous peoples‟ sometimes negative experience of extractive activities. The human rights risks associated with extractive activities in or near indigenous peoples‟ territories are aggravated by the ongoing marginalization of indigenous peoples in many States. 30. The need to address the barriers to the right of indigenous peoples to fully participate in extractive industry development on their lands and territories remains a pressing concern, as outlined in advice No. 2 (A/HRC/18/42, annex). (a) Urgency and importance of the issues 31. As the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has noted, based on communications received by him and his country visits, extractive industries operating in or near indigenous territories can have a negative, “even catastrophic” impact on indigenous peoples‟ rights.14 He has also noted that “the implementation of natural resource extraction 14 10 See the statement of the Special Rapporteur to the Third Committee at the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly (17 October 2011). Available from http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/statements/statement-of-special-rapporteur-to-un-general-assembly-2011.