The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and International Trade Agreements: Why it Matters for Psychology
George Drazenovich, Lakehead University, Canada
In the last year, changes in the United States’ policy towards internal sustainable investment have brought the issue of international trade and security into sharper public focus. Countries worldwide are entering into renewed trade agreements to bolster their local economies and support development.
Conspicuously absent from any of these proposed trade agreements is any reference to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (United Nations, 2007), which all G7 members have supported. A key human rights principle emerging out of the UNDRIP is Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Article 19 explicitly references FPIC writing, “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.”
To date, this principle has been honoured more in the breach than in observance, necessitating redress by the affected G7 states. Article 11(2) of the UNDRIP, for example, emphasizes that States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms developed in conjunction with Indigenous peoples, with respect to property taken without their free, prior and informed consent.
The UNDRIP resonates deeply with psychological understandings of collective trauma, intergenerational harm from colonialism, and the mental health impacts of land dispossession on Indigenous peoples. Psychological research shows that such violations contribute to elevated rates of stress, depression, substance use, and suicide in affected communities, while FPIC empowers autonomy and resilience.
This issue is current in North America, including Mexico. In April 2016, the Standing Rock protests, centred on the Dakota Access Pipeline, were a pivotal moment for Indigenous rights. It was supported by groups affiliated with the University of British Columbia and has become an international movement (Wong, 2016; University of British Columbia, n.d.). In April 2023, ten First Nations, including Neskantaga, launched a lawsuit against Canada and Ontario, arguing that over a century of resource extraction in their territory violated treaty rights (Tremonti, 2024). In Mexico, several Indigenous communities protest extraction that violates their lands and rights (Estrada, 2022). According to international law, trade agreements must be interpreted and implemented consistently with human rights law (United Nations, 1969). Additionally, states cannot use trade agreements to derogate from human rights obligations, including Indigenous rights under non-binding declarations such as the UNDRIP and other more binding international and national enactments (Amnesty International, 2025; House of Commons, 2019).
Psychologists and their associations can take proactive steps to address future rights violations concerning the appropriation and development of Indigenous land and traditional spaces, without the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). Informed by international norms, psychology ought to oppose any practices that justify exploitation, and the failure to enshrine Indigenous rights in agreements risks further historical exploitation. In practical terms, this translates to psychologists lobbying for the integration of FPIC in all international trade agreements, drawing on evidence of psychological harms resulting from such violations. Psychologists could advocate publishing, through their respective professional associations, policy briefs educating policymakers on the mental health costs of non-consensual development. In this way, we can position psychology as a key ally in global reconciliation efforts between Indigenous people and the colonial powers that settled on their traditional territories.
References
Amnesty International Canada. (2025, February 10). Canada-Ecuador Free Trade Agreement imperils Indigenous rights. https://www.amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/canada-ecuador-free-trade-agreement-imperils-indigenous-rights
Estrada, A. (2022, May 11). A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries. Mongabay. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/a-look-at-violence-and-conflict-over-indigenous-lands-in-nine-latin-american-countries/
Hassan, S. (2025, April 19). Canada has the critical minerals Donald Trump wants. So what should we do with them? The Canadian Press. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2025/04/19/canada-has-the-critical-minerals-donald-trump-wants-so-what-should-we-do-with-them
House of Commons of Canada, Standing Committee on International Trade. (2019). Committee Report No. 16 – CIIT (42-1). Parliament of Canada. https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/CIIT/report-16/
Tremonti, A. (2024, August 28). The battle over Ontario’s Ring of Fire. Maclean’s. https://macleans.ca/society/environment/ring-of-fire-ontario/
University of British Columbia (n.d.). Standing with Standing Rock. UBC Open Case Studies. https://cases.open.ubc.ca/standing-with-standing-rock/
United Nations. (1969). Vienna convention on the law of treaties (United Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 1155, p. 331). https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf
United Nations General Assembly. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. United Nations. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf
Wong, J. C. (2016, September 12). Standing Rock protests: This is only the beginning. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/standing-rock-protests-dakota-access-pipeline