Indigenous Peruvians score a victory in fight for territorial and health rights.
| Autor | Jana, Elsa Chanduvi |
After months of pressure and work, indigenous and campesino (farm workers) organizations won a victory May 25 when the Peruvian Congress repealed a law that infringed on their territorial and self-determination rights.
The repealed law--Legislative Decree 1333--had authorized expropriation of territory belonging to indigenous people and campesino communities and the relocation of indigenous populations, as well as the interference in internal native and campesino community organizations, in order to facilitate investment projects included in President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's economic reactivation program (NotiSur, March 24, 2017).
This decree contemplated the creation of a government agency (Proyecto Especial de Acceso a Predios para Proyectos de Inversion Priorizados APIP), that would have granted access and prioritized execution of infrastructure projects on lands that had not yet been regularized. Of Peru's 10,529 indigenous communities, more than 4,000 still lack property titles.
The Institute for the Legal Defense of the Environment and Sustainable Development (Instituto de Defensa Legal del Ambiente y el Desarrollo Sostenible, IDLADS), which provided indigenous organizations with legal support in the efforts to repeal the law, praised the congressional action. "This legislative achievement owes its success to the excellent work of indigenous organizations, which used parliamentary procedures, social impact, strategic litigation, and an outstanding communications campaign to its fullest potential," it said.
IDLADS was making reference to the disinformation campaign launched by the economics ministry (Ministerio de Economia y Finanzas, MEF), which tried to represent meetings with indigenous organizations as an indication of the organizations' agreement with Decree 1333 and their opposition to its repeal. The ministry simply wanted to make slight modifications to the decree.
"The saddest thing about the MEF campaign was that the vice minister in charge of intercultural relations backed the decree and ignored congressional action [the Congressional Constitutional Commission had voted on March 14 in favor of its repeal] and the ombudsman, who recommended repeal of this regulation because it had been created without proper of consultation and it was damaging to the collective rights of indigenous peoples. It then became clear that the agency in charge of inter-cultural relations does not respond to the defense of indigenous rights and...
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