"COURT ORDER ON LOGGING CONCESSIONS THREATENS INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES", 26 November 2022

...In an historic ruling, the judiciary has ordered regional governments to abstain from granting logging concessions on indigenous reserves for peoples in voluntary isolation.

On 21 November the Superior Court of Loreto issued its decision regarding a claim presented by ORPIO, with support from the Legal Defence Institute (IDL), the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The court ordered the Loreto regional government to abstain from granting logging concessions in the territories of indigenous peoples in isolation. The sentence also prohibited the regional government from granting, reactivating, creating, establishing, or shaping forestry concessions within the Yavarí Tapiche, Yavarí Mirim, Napo Tigre or Sierra del Divisor Occidental indigenous reserves.

The ruling comes despite a media campaign by the logging industry...It also comes despite a bill before Congress that would transfer the authority to create indigenous reserves away from the national to the regional governments....

...Aidesep and ORPIO are virulently opposed to the proposed new law, claiming that it would violate the rights of peoples in voluntary isolation protected by specific legislation and by international agreements such as Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the right to free, prior and informed consent...