On 12th October fifteen Peruvian organisations launched a new campaign to persuade the government to resume a programme granting land titles to indigenous communities.

The scheme in question was originally administered by state body COFOPRI, but has effectively ceased since responsibility was transferred to regional authorities as part of the decentralisation programme. According to the Instituto del Bien Común, one of the campaign leaders, no community has been granted official title during the past two years.

Today, some 959 rural, 2,000 wetland and 650 indigenous communities lack official rights to the territory they inhabit. Local organisations report that data collection on these communities by state institutions has been only limited and sporadic, and has not been shared between regions or government departments. This shortcoming, campaigners say, has prevented Peru from establishing a unitary registry which details the location of all land owned or inhabited by its population.

According to Santiago Alfaro Rotondo of Oxfam’s indigenous law programme, the absence of such a registry has proved particularly problematic where the state has granted extractive concessions in a given territory. Lacking accurate data on the locations of communities, officials have tended to incorrectly assume that large areas are unpopulated. Accordingly, the concessions granted often overlap with those occupied by indigenous groups.

The new campaign, entitled ‘Secure Territories for Peruvian Communities’, seeks to combat such problems through mobilising popular support and persuading the government to resume its land titling programme.

For more details on the campaign please visit http://comunidadesdelperu.ibcperu.org/ [Sp].