A/HRC/39/62 7. States should ensure that all information, including about the potential impact of the project or measure, is provided to indigenous peoples and is presented in a manner and form that is understandable to them, culturally appropriate, in accordance with their inherent traditions and independent. If necessary, it should also be presented orally and in indigenous languages. 8. States should ensure that there is institutional capacity and political will within the organs of the State to understand the meaning of and process to seek and obtain free, prior and informed consent, including by respecting existing indigenous protocols. 9. States should ensure that indigenous peoples have the resources and capacity to effectively engage in consultation processes by supporting the development of their own institutions, while not compromising the independence of those institutions. States and the private sector should promote and respect indigenous peoples’ own protocols, as an essential means of preparing the State, third parties and indigenous peoples to enter into consultation and cooperation, and for the smooth running of the consultations. 10. States should ensure equality throughout the process and that the issue of the imbalance of power between the State and indigenous peoples is addressed and mitigated, for example employing independent facilitators for consultations and establishing funding mechanisms that allow indigenous peoples to have access to independent technical assistance and advice. 11. States should engage broadly with all potentially impacted indigenous peoples, consulting with them through their own representative decision-making institutions, in which they are encouraged to include women, children, youth and persons with disabilities, and bearing in mind that the governance structures of some indigenous communities may be male dominated. During each consultation, efforts should be made to understand the specific impacts on indigenous women, children, youth and persons with disabilities. 12. States should ensure that the free, prior and informed consent process supports consensus building within the indigenous peoples’ community, and practices that might cause division should be avoided, including when indigenous peoples are in situations of vulnerability like economic duress. Special attention should be given in this regard to indigenous peoples representing distinct sectors in the community, including dispersed communities and indigenous peoples no longer in possession of land or who have moved to urban areas. 13. States should ensure that if indigenous peoples are in voluntary isolation no activities impacting on their rights should be considered. Where interventions related to those peoples are necessary to ensure their well-being or are unavoidable the appropriate United Nations and regional safeguards should be adhered to. 14. Indigenous peoples are encouraged to establish robust representative mechanisms and laws, customs and protocols for free, prior and informed consent. At the start of a consultation process indigenous peoples should agree on and make clear how they will make a collective decision, including the threshold to indicate when there is consent (see A/HRC/21/55). 15. States should ensure that indigenous peoples have the opportunity to participate in impact assessment processes (human rights, environmental, cultural and social), which should be undertaken prior to the proposal. Such impact assessments should be objective and impartial. 16. States should prevent measures or projects that may cause significant harm to indigenous people, including cumulative harm from competing land-use forms. 17. States should consult and cooperate with indigenous peoples to establish procedures to regulate, verify and monitor the consultation process, to ensure that the State consults and cooperates to obtain free, prior and informed consent, and if consent is required, that it is received. 18. States should ensure that treaties and other constructive agreements and arrangements recognizing the jurisdiction or decision-making authority of indigenous peoples are upheld and enforced. 19