Indigenous women from Peru denounce violation of rights before UN rapporteur

This Saturday it was reported that indigenous and Amazonian leaders from Peru denounced the violation of their rights due to the impact of extractive activities in their territory before the United Nations Rapporteur on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, Marcos Orellana.

The National Organization of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru (Onamiap) indicated in a statement that the rapporteur visited its headquarters in Lima to meet with its president, Melania Canales Poma, and the organization’s secretary for Youth and Children, Karen Huere Cristóbal .

Also, with grassroots leaders Margarita Machacca Quispe, Guadalupe Flores Chacca, from the southern Andean region of Puno, and María Luz Canaquiri Murayari, from the Amazon region, from Loreto.

At the meeting, the representatives affirmed that extractive activities “imposed without complying with consultation and prior, free and informed consent, poison the blood and territories of indigenous peoples.”

In addition, they denounced that the Peruvian State, represented by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, “refuses to submit to consultation and consent the granting of mining and oil concessions in indigenous territories.”

The leaders also emphasized the “lack of an indigenous institutionality in the structure of the State”, since, as they indicated, the Vice Ministry of Interculturality “omits its obligation to promote and protect collective rights” and also “develops regressive policies on this issue “.

Onamiap added that the oil spills “which the Amazonian peoples have suffered for more than fifty years” and the mining tailings in the Andes “leave thousands of people with heavy metals in their blood, produce new diseases, as well as women who cannot conceive or suffer miscarriages.

“Add to that the polluted rivers, where there are no longer fish, cattle that are poisoned by drinking their waters, lands that no longer produce. In short, the loss of their survival activities, the migration of youth, and the deterioration of cultural identity,” emphasized the organization.

According to the statement, Orellana stressed that his visit to Peru was academic and not official, but stated that the State’s obligation is to guarantee the human rights to which it has committed itself through international treaties and that the role of indigenous organizations is to demand those rights.

He pointed out that although the problem exposed “affects many people and in many places”, it does so to a greater extent to the indigenous peoples and women who “live in harmony with the environment, and this gives them not only material sustenance, but also also spiritual and cultural identity”.

“You provide lessons to overcome the climate emergency,” he said, addressing the leaders.

At the end of his visit to Onamiap, Orellana asked to maintain contact and to receive information on the situation of the rights of indigenous peoples and women in Peru.

Orellana also met on Friday with representatives of communities from the Peruvian jungle and coast, who asked for the UN’s help in dealing with oil spills, a problem that has affected them for decades and has been in force in the country since Last January, 10,400 barrels of crude oil were dumped into the sea of ​​Lima from the La Pampilla refinery, which is operated by Repsol. (I)