“How Peru excludes indigenous voices in its quest to develop the Amazon” - February 15, 2018

The Peruvian government has a clear development agenda for its Amazon rainforest regions. Oil extraction is already happening on a large scale. That will be supported by significant investment in new gas pipelines, proposed hydroelectric dams and other large transport projects…But what do people who actually live in the region make of all this? In my research, I have shown that Peru’s development plans are deliberately restricting the ability of local citizens to provide consent for these projects…This is no accident. Most people living in Peru’s Amazon regions are indigenous, a group of people who remain excluded and discriminated against. According to one former president, indigenous people are an obstacle to development, “artificial communities that own 200,000 hectares on paper but only farm 10,000 hectares while the rest is idle property”…[According] to Peru’s human rights ombudsman, social conflicts which turn violent have resulted in 271 deaths since 2006, while Global Witness says 50 environmental and human rights defenders were killed in Peru between 2010 and 2015. Other groups that campaign on these issues have also been attacked by the state to discredit them. For example, anti-mining groups have been labelled “anti-mining terrorists” by the state, a term used deliberately to associate them with the Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist insurgency that ravaged Peru in the 1980s and 1990s…The law of prior consultation was developed to ensure discussions with indigenous people ahead of any natural resource development. Crucially, the law itself is only consultative and does not give people a veto over any development projects…