Indigenous leaders from the area around Peru’s largest oil field have threatened to block the government from accessing their territories and halt oil production unless an indigenous rights law is applied within twenty days.
The tribal leaders, who hail from four Amazon river basins, accuse the government of refusing to carry out a consultation process even though it is negotiating a new 30-year contract for oil block 192 with Frontera Energy, a Canadian firm, whose current contract expires in early 2019.
The so-called prior consultation law, passed in 2011 in Peru, requires the government to seek free, prior and informed consent from indigenous people before approving any development plans that might affect them.
But officials from Peru’s energy ministry refused to confirm if a new consultation process would be undertaken, stating that a 2015 process was still valid. Indigenous leaders representing more than 100 communities in the Marañon, Pastaza, Corrientes and Tigre river basins said that process had been carried out in “bad faith”.
“We live in a state where our democratic rights are not respected,” said Carlos Sandi, the leader of the Corrientes river indigenous federation.
“If there is no consultation we will not allow the state or the oil companies in our territory for the next 30 years,” said Sandi, one of nearly 25 representatives of more than 40,000 people living in the four river basins in Peru’s northern Loreto region.
Angela Acevedo, director of indigenous peoples rights at Peru’s vice ministry of intercultural affairs, confirmed that the 2015 process had ended in disagreement between the government and the indigenous communities but said the “state takes the final decision”.
“The consultation process is not a veto; it’s not a yes or no [to a project],” said Acevedo.
She said the indigenous groups had issued a formal appeal against the ministry’s decision to her agency which is responsible for overseeing the application of the prior consultation law, also known as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169.
But Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said: “Indigenous peoples have the right to be consulted about any project which is brought into their communities.”
In July, Tauli-Corpuz and the special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes, Baskut Tuncak, highlighted Peru’s “grossly inadequate efforts” to remedy widespread oil spills which polluted drinking water, caused widespread environmental damage, ill health and, according to Amazon leaders, deaths.
“If those issues are not dealt with in the right way you cannot expect indigenous people to agree to another contract,” Tauli-Corpuz said. “They must be addressed seriously as the basis of [any] future consultation is good faith.”
Alicia Abanto, the indigenous peoples’ attache with Peru’s human rights’ ombudsman, said the government needed to “move faster” to meet commitments to clean-up oil pollution and improve access to health care and education in the remote region.
