Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is established in Liberian law and practice. It is a way to protect the rights of communities by involving them in decisions about developments that affects land or resources where they live.This is a report on the development of National Guidelines for FPIC, under contract to the Environmental Protection Agency and under the auspices of the Liberian Forestry Sector Project, run by the Forestry Development Authority with support from The World Bank and funding from the Government of Norway.
FPIC is most prominent and defined in the forestry sector, but it has a wider purpose as a means of protecting community rights and upholding the participation of Liberian citizens in decisions about the use of land and resources.

As Liberia goes down the path of strengthening community rights to land and resources, the right of communities to give or withhold consent to developments that affect their assets will expand and with it the importance of FPIC as a process for reaching agreements between developers and communities.FPIC has a firm legal basis in Liberian laws and regulations, although this is limited to certain sectors and activities. The Guidelines developed in this report are grounded in these laws and give clarity to the FPIC requirements in forestry, environment and land rights legislation. But the aim is also to develop Guidelines that will be suitable for the wider application of FPIC that is introduced by the recent Liberian Land Rights Act and is likely to arise from future developments of national law and regulation. The Government and nongovernment bodies that contributed to the development of the guidelines at consultation meetings were clear
that FPIC was relevant across sectors, and across government. ‘FPIC is everyone’s business’, as one
participant said.