Indigenous peoples account for approximately 40% of Peru’s population, with a population of 8-9 million. It is estimated that there are more than 60 indigenous groups scattered across the mountain, coastal and Amazonian regions. The largest indigenous groups are the mountainous Quechua and Aymara peoples. The Amazonian region is home to a large diversity of peoples and ethnolinguistic groups that are widely dispersed geographically and with much smaller populations.
What is currently Peru’s territory was once the seat both of the Tawantinsuyo and the viceroyal government. After the policies of dispossession of the 19th century, the constitutions began to recognise indigenous communities and communal land in 1920. In the early 1970s, the agrarian reform terminated the latifundios and indigenous servitude. The 80s and 90s saw high levels of political violence, with 75% of the victims being indigenous, most of them Quechua-speaking, as well as Amazonian Ashanikas (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2003).
The Peruvian State recognises the multicultural nature of the nation in its 1993 Constitution and, within this framework, the right to cultural identity, as well as customary law and special jurisdiction (indigenous and peasant justice), alongside with other rights for peasant and native communities. Peru ratified ILO Convention No. 169 in 1994. Important laws were also enacted to protect indigenous peoples in isolated regions or during initial contact, intercultural bilingual education, intellectual property of traditional knowledge and the creation of a national institute for Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian peoples (INDEPA).
Nevertheless, the situation regarding the legal certainty of land and territory and peasant and native communities, threatened by extraction activities for which they were not consulted, is deteriorating. The biggest challenge is the effective implementation of protective regulations, as well as the ability to exercise their rights of consultation and participation, and being truly recognised as indigenous peoples.
The ILO has been working to promote training activities on Convention No. 169 to indigenous leaders, public officials, NGOs and academics. It is also providing technical assistance for a consultation process that will terminate with a national plan for the implementation of Convention No. 169, with the participation of indigenous peoples.