AMAZON IN EMERGENCY:

We Request Urgent Support for Indigenous Peoples

Dear President Vizcarra,

In the context of global emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the undersigned organizations express our solidarity with the demands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon and urge the Government of Peru to provide them with the comprehensive care necessary to safeguard their rights. To this effect, we request both that they be provided with medicines, medical care and food, and that the reactivation of economic activities that put the health of indigenous communities at risk be immediately suspended.

Based on the above, we reiterate the demands put forward by the Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon presented in the AIDESEP public statement of July 10, 2020. As the indigenous leaders have stated, urgent and immediate actions need to be implemented. 

Among them are:

1. Schedule a direct working meeting between indigenous leaders, the President of the Republic, Mr. Martín Vizcarra, and his cabinet of ministers.
2. Urgent medical care available to towns and communities, including medicines, oxygen, medical personnel, and biosafety equipment for the medical staff, for the team in charge of transportation, for the patients, and for their families. In order to make the shipment of medicines viable and facilitate the transfer mechanisms for people infected with COVID-19 in communities, actions must be coordinated between all levels of the State, including when necessary, the Air Force and the Navy.
3. Strengthen the work being carried out by community health agents, with “telemedicine” services and equipment that allow the provision of advice and supervision by doctors and nurses by telephone or radio for the areas that have coverage.
4. Postpone the reactivation of economic and extractive activities close to the communities as they would increase the risk of contagion among the indigenous population, risking a potential ethnocide. Nor should such activities be reactivated in nearby areas or overlapping with reserves of Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI) or in the requested areas in favor of PIACI.
5. Suspend in person consultation processes until the risk of contagion for the communities has subsided, and definitively discard the proposal for virtual prior consultations.
6. Coordinate directly with the indigenous organizations the design and implementation of culturally safe and physically viable mechanisms to resume school education for indigenous children and teenagers who do not have appropriate access to the internet, radio signal, or other remote means of communication.

Mr. President Martín Vizcarra, we understand that the situation is extremely complex at a global level and that it has exceeded the capacities of the State. But, more than 130 days after declaring the emergency, it is unacceptable that the attention provided to the grave situation of Indigenous Peoples has been so limited. We appeal to your humanity and responsibility towards all Peruvians. We trust that you will take immediate action to begin to resolve a crisis that exacerbates the situation of discrimination and exclusion that Indigenous Peoples have been suffering for generations, and that has also aggravated the precarious security situation in which they live, making them victims of new threats, attacks and murders, all of which must be investigated and punished as soon as possible. 

As documented and explained in the recent United Nations report, "Preventing the Next Pandemic – Zoonotic Diseases and How to Break the Chain of Transmission," COVID-19 is just one example of the growing trend of virus-borne illness that has leapt from animal hosts to the human population. The report concludes that this upward trend in zoonotic diseases is largely driven by the degradation of the environment and soil; by the change in land use from forest to grassland or crops; by the exploitation of wildlife; and by intensive extraction of forest resources and by climate change.

As science has shown that deforestation and forest degradation are a major cause behind the emergence and spread of dangerous infectious diseases, the post-pandemic economic reactivation proposal cannot be based on increased threats to forests and their inhabitants, which not only violates basic human rights and exacerbates climate change, but  increases the risk of new pandemics.

For all these reasons, President Vizcarra, we strongly urge you to reconsider the country's economic reactivation mechanisms, since they must not be promoted at the cost of the lives of Indigenous Peoples.

Sincerely,