A/HRC/33/42/Add.3 seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, cutting through linguistic and cultural communities and constraining reindeer-herding activities. Today, the Sami population is a numerical minority within those States and is estimated to be between 70,000 and 100,000, with about 40,000 to 60,000 in Norway, 15,000 to 20,000 in Sweden, 9,000 in Finland and about 2,000 in the Russian Federation.1 III. Natural resource investments on Sami lands 6. In recent years, high mineral and energy commodity prices have driven an increase in natural resource investments in the Nordic countries. While locally that has been welcomed as a source of employment and development opportunities, it has also sparked conflict, especially in areas where Sami communities find themselves competing for their land with other interests, including the construction of buildings and roads, mining, windmills, hydroelectric dams, overhead power lines, oil and gas installations, forestry projects and tourism activities. 7. During her visit, the Special Rapporteur observed that the natural resource extraction currently under way in the Sápmi region has created an unstable atmosphere of social conflict. That is acknowledged not only by the Sami communities that are affected, but also by public authorities and extractive companies themselves. The tension between the competing interests of the Sami people and business activities that are being pursued on their lands is likely to inform the dynamics of indigenous issues in the Nordic countries and should, as a matter of priority, be addressed by the Governments concerned. 8. As the former Special Rapporteur noted, and in keeping with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, the responsibility of the State to ensure the protection of the rights of indigenous people in the context of natural resource investments entails “ensuring a regulatory framework that recognizes indigenous peoples’ rights over lands and natural resources”. That means respect for those rights both in all relevant State administrative decision-making and provision for effective sanctions and remedies when those rights are infringed either by government or corporate entities. The regulatory framework “requires legislation or regulations that incorporate international standards of indigenous rights” and that make them operational through the various components of State administration that govern “land tenure, mining, oil, gas and other natural resource extraction or development” (see A/HRC/24/41, para. 44). 9. A point of contention in the Special Rapporteur’s discussions with representatives of the Sami people and the Governments concerned has been the scope and content of the State duty to consult the Sami people and the need to obtain their consent for natural resource investment projects on their traditional territories. Through traditional use, the Sami people have established property rights to their lands and resources and to property in the form of rights to continue to pursue their traditional livelihoods. The States’ obligation to respect property rights on the basis of customary land tenure is grounded both in multilateral human rights treaties that are binding upon the Governments concerned, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 2 and the International 1 2 4 Based on country of birth and nationality. See Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 23 (1994), para. 7.