A/HRC/24/41 sectors, including some of the world’s major mining and oil and gas companies. The Voluntary Principles employ a human rights framework to address company relations with State and private security providers. This multi-stakeholder process is to be encouraged, although the Special Rapporteur considers that adherence to principles should not be considered voluntary. All extractive companies and relevant State authorities should become aware of and adhere to the Voluntary Principles along with all applicable human rights standards. 2. Freedom from undue pressures to accept extractive projects or engage in consultations 24. Apart from concerns over abusive use of force or direct reprisals, indigenous peoples should be free from pressure from State or extractive company agents to compel them to accept extractive projects. To this end, basic services for which the State is responsible, including for education, health and infrastructure, should not be conditioned upon acceptance of extractive projects. Furthermore, States and companies should guard against acts of manipulation or intimidation of indigenous leaders by State or company agents. 25. Finally, States should not insist, or allow companies to insist, that indigenous peoples engage in consultations about proposed extractive projects to which they have clearly expressed opposition. As is now well understood, States have the obligation to consult with indigenous peoples about decisions that affect them, including decisions about extractive projects. In complying with this obligation States are required to make available to indigenous peoples adequate consultation procedures that comply with international standards and to reasonably encourage indigenous peoples to engage in the procedures. (See paras. 58-71 below). In the view of the Special Rapporteur, however, when States make such efforts to consult about projects and, for their part, the indigenous peoples concerned unambiguously oppose the proposed projects and decline to engage in consultations, as has happened in several countries, the States’ obligation to consult is discharged. In such cases, neither States nor companies need or should insist on consultations, while, at the same time, they must understand that the situation is one in which indigenous peoples have affirmatively withheld their consent. The question then becomes what consequences for decisions about the project follow from the indigenous opposition and withholding of consent. B. The principle of free, prior and informed consent 26. Beyond being protected expression, indigenous peoples’ opposition to extractive projects can have determinative consequences, in the light of the principle of free, prior and informed consent, a principal that is articulated in several provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and that is gaining increasing acceptance in practice.12 12 8 The Special Rapporteur has already devoted considerable attention to examining the contours of this principle and its relation to the duty of States to consult with indigenous peoples on decisions affecting them. See, for example, A/HRC/12/34, paras. 36-57; and A/HRC/21/47, paras. 47-53 and 62-71.