Can consultation be a universal requirement for companies to meet their responsibility to respect human rights?  What about where the government curtails freedom of speech or freedom of association, or insists that consultations take place in the presence of the police or other state agents?  Do you know of examples of where effective consultation has taken place in such conditions?

I'm thinking as I write, so I'm afraid this may be long and disjointed! 

Regarding the first two questions:  one answer, clearly, is to say 'We won't invest in xx country, because its free speech record is poor'.  But then we won't have a conversation! So let's assume that the company has announced that it is going to invest in a country where free speech is limited and people are sometimes 'observed' by state agents. 

In such a situation, where citizens might be penalised if they express opposition to the company and/or the government, can one say that consultation is still a requirement?  Tricky.... but I think one could say that companies must demonstrate that they have made efforts to 'hear the voice of the community'.  How could they do this? 

They could, for example, talk to the host government to put forward a rationale for a meaningful consultation process.  Such a conv is unlikely to work if the gov't perceives that the company is defending only its own interests and may even want to do things that would subvert the authority of the government.  The company may need the government to believe that it too will benefit from a meaningful conversation, eg through a better community response to future projects, less likelihood of hostility spilling over into physical conflict, reputation benefits, quicker project completion leading to earlier receipts into the gov't exchequer and so on.    

They could also think about how they could provide channels for local people to express their views in ways that don't require them to stand up in public meetings and possibly be identified as 'trouble makers'.  Ideally, if the company can develop a relationship of trust with several community members, it could ask them for advice on how best to provide dialogue opportunities that people would trust and use.  Possibilities could include regularly manning an information point (or office) where people could come and ask questions... but also express views; providing a physical post box for people to put notes into; providing an e-mail address (if local people have e-mail) and a physical address for people to send letters by post (although such channels may be scrutinised); having 'community liaison officers' who are trusted by the community and can be a regular presence so that people can talk to them freely and frequently. 

These ideas won't work everywhere, but they could help a company to demonstrate that it has tried to provide channels to 'hear people's voices'.      

Robust consultation on high-impact projects is fundamentally important, and just makes good business sense.  Most countries - even those in countries with human rights "challenges" - have some basic public consultation and information disclosure requirements as part of regulatory approvals.  Conducting good consultation processes also protects business' long-term interests.  And, it's just the right thing to do from a business perspective.

For example, the IFC Performance Standards and the Equator Principles refer to "free prior and informed consultation":  consultation should be "free" (free of external manipulation, interference or coercion, and intimidation), "prior" (timely disclosure of information) and "informed" (relevant, understandable and accessible information), and apply to the entire project process and not to the early stages of the project alone.  For Equator banks this is an existing standard that is already in use.