Criminalization of Indigenous Land Defenders in Peru

Last updated July 2024

The Mashco Piro Indigenous People live in voluntary isolation, without contact with other Indigenous groups or outside society in general. Their survival is at risk, as they are vulnerable to regular and irregular deforestation, forced contact caused by extractive industry activities and inadequate protection of their territory, exposure to diseases to which they lack immunity, and the climate emergency.

The Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Affluents (FENAMAD) is an organization led by Indigenous people working in defense of the rights of Indigenous peoples in isolation, including the Mashco Piro. FENAMAD is now the target of a defamation case brought by  Canales Tahuamanu S. A. C., a logging company operating in Mashco Piro territory, whose deforestation of the protected area FENAMAD has actively opposed.

UNHR has participated in FENAMAD's defense by preparing a brief that will be submitted to the Supreme Court of Justice in Peru. The brief, drafted by UNHR legal experts, draws on analysis by a student from the Yale School of the Environment of the special situation of risk faced by Indigenous peoples in isolation, including the Mashco Piro, as well as the violence and criminalization of Indigenous people who defend the territory and the environment, like FENAMAD. Signed by former commissioners of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, current and former UN experts, and other leading experts and scholars, the brief urges the Peruvian Supreme Court to decide this emblematic case in FENAMAD's favor based on the most protective international human rights standards.