Peru Appeallate Court Reverses Indigenous Community’s Right to Reclaim Ancestral Rainforests In The Amazon

An appellate court has set aside a significant decision granting an Indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon the right to reclaim their ancestral rainforests.

The Kichwa tribes inhabited the region of Cordillera Azul National Park for centuries prior to its establishment in 2001, which the Kichwa argue was a result of land theft.

An appeals court has overturned a significant ruling that granted an Indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon the right to reclaim ancestral rainforests. Legal experts have criticized the decision, calling it irregular.

For centuries, the Kichwa tribes resided in the region where Cordillera Azul National Park was established in 2001, a move the Kichwa claim resulted in the theft of their land. Major companies like Shell and TotalEnergies have since invested over $80 million in purchasing credits from the park to offset their carbon emissions.

However, the Puerto Franco community of Kichwa has not benefited from this financial support, experiencing food scarcity after losing their traditional access to hunting, fishing, and gathering within the park. In April, the community achieved a significant legal victory when Judge Simona del Socorro Torres Sánchez ruled that the establishment of the park without their consent had violated their rights. The judge ordered authorities to initiate the process of granting them land title, ensuring their involvement in conservation efforts and park management.

Just ten days following the initial ruling, an appeals court made a decision stating that CIMA, the nonprofit organization responsible for managing Cordillera Azul National Park and overseeing the carbon credit project on behalf of the Peruvian government, had been improperly included as a co-defendant in the case. Consequently, the appeals court invalidated the previous ruling, including the benefits that had been granted to the Indigenous tribe. The court cited “the presence of insurmountable defects both in due process and in the motivation of the judicial decision” as the basis for its decision.

Jorge Aliaga, the executive director of CIMA, expressed his approval of the ruling, emphasizing the importance of adhering to formal procedures in the Peruvian judicial process.

However, three Peruvian lawyers who examined the case at the request of The Associated Press raised doubts about the decision made by the appeals court. Two of them believed that CIMA had indeed participated as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, and even if a procedural error occurred initially, it did not constitute a violation of due process. All three lawyers disagreed with the court’s decision to dismiss the entire verdict, stating that it deviated from the normal course of proceedings.

Pedro Grández, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, criticized the court’s attempt by stating that “It’s not normal at all,” and the court was “trying to weigh in on the substance of the matter when it hasn’t reviewed anything of substance, only the procedure.”

Juan Carlos Díaz, another constitutional lawyer from the Pontifical Catholic University, expressed his disagreement with the annulment of the original ruling, stating that there were no valid reasons to do so. He pointed out that CIMA’s lawyer had actively participated in the judicial hearing where it was added as a co-defendant and had not raised any objections at that time. Díaz believed that the appeals court made an error in its decision.

Silvia Sánchez, an associate professor at the Academy of the Magistrature, which provides training for Peruvian judges, commented on the situation, stating that the reasons cited for overturning the entire process were either irrelevant or minor, and did not warrant such a significant action of returning the case to the hearing stage.

Due to the alleged procedural error, the case would have been sent back to Judge Del Socorro Torres Sánchez. However, the Peruvian government successfully requested the same appellate panel to assess the merits of the case. The government’s argument is twofold: first, they claim that the statute of limitations has expired, preventing the Kichwa from making a claim, and second, they assert that the park cannot overlap with Kichwa territory because the territory has never been legally defined.

In December, an investigation conducted by The Associated Press revealed that the park’s land likely includes ancestral territory of the Kichwa, based on the definition provided by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Indigenous convention that Peru signed in 1994.