UN expert warns that Peru's forestry reform threatens Indigenous peoples' rights

Geneva, Jan 31 (EFE).- An amendment to Peru’s forestry law could legalize and encourage the dispossession of indigenous lands, warned the UN Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Calí Tzay, on Wednesday.

“This law will have a negative impact on the ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon,” the expert said, stressing that Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and first contact “may be particularly vulnerable to this regulatory change, which could threaten their physical and cultural survival.”

The Guatemalan expert, said that “approximately one third” of the Indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon have not received title to their lands which makes them specially “vulnerable to third parties.”

And although the text of the law explicitly mentions Indigenous and peasant communities, it has not been subjected to a consultation process to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous communities affected, as is their right under Peru’s 1994 signing of International Labor Organization Convention 169.

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The rapporteur warned that the law is a setback for forest governance in the country, where Indigenous and environmental defenders are victims of constant threats, attacks and assassinations.

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https://www.laprensalatina.com/un-expert-warns-that-perus-forestry-reform-threatens-indigenous-peoples-rights/