- A report by Indigenous rights advocacy groups ProPurús and AIDESEP shows a panorama of violence faced by environmental defenders in Peru’s Amazonian region.
- The report found 226 cases of Indigenous defenders at risk between 2010 and 2024 in Ucayali department and neighboring parts of the departments of Huánuco and Loreto.
- Illegal activities such as drug trafficking, gold mining and logging are the main drivers of violence, according to the report.
- The expansion of monoculture plantations, many of them with legal protection, is another source of persistent pressure on Indigenous territories.
Indigenous territories and the people who defend them in the Peruvian Amazon face a litany of growing threats, activist groups warn in a recent report. In defending their land rights in the face of incursions by criminal, extractive and infrastructure activities, Indigenous peoples run the risk of harassment, criminalization, and even death, they warn.
The “Situation of Indigenous Defenders in Ucayali, 2024” report by ProPurús and AIDESEP, an umbrella group of Indigenous associations in the Peruvian Amazon, recorded 226 cases between 2010 and 2024 of Indigenous defenders in “situations of risk” in the region.
The report covers the department of Ucayali; Puerto Inca province in Huánuco department to the west of Ucayali; and two districts — Padre Márquez and Contamana — in Loreto department to the north. According to the study, one in every 13 environmental defenders in Ucayali was killed during the study period. Between 2019 and 2024 alone, 11 environmental defenders were killed here, followed by Huánuco with a toll of eight killed.
The report’s findings were presented May 15 at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. They provide a comprehensive look into the threats facing environmental defenders in the three departments, which are home to the 13 Indigenous federations and nearly 260 Indigenous communities that comprise ORAU, AIDESEP’s Ucayali chapter.
Among the threats driving violence against Indigenous defenders in the Amazon, the report cites “illegal economies, including illegal gold mining, drug trafficking, and illegal logging,” as the main drivers of conflict.
Another key part of the report looks at pressure on Indigenous communities from government concessions and permits that overlap with ancestral lands, in addition to land grabbing and illegal logging. Other factors include monoculture plantations, road construction, the expansion of illicit coca crops, and the presence of clandestine airstrips.
Data on Amazon threats
The report by ProPurús and ORAU cites data from Peru’s Ministry of Justice and Human Rights showing that, between 2019 and 2024, more than 650 human rights defenders and their families faced risk throughout Peru. The Amazonian departments of Loreto, Ucayali, San Martín, Amazonas and Madre de Dios accounted for more than 54% of those cases, with Ucayali alone accounting for 21.65%.
The government figures also show that 57 environmental defenders were killed throughout the entire country during that period, at least 44 of them in Amazonian regions.
“When we look at the Amazon, we see something green, but the truth is that land use, the number of roads, the clandestine airstrips, road construction, forest paths … is tremendously complex, and it is something that most people —particularly decision-makers— do not take into account,” said Iván Brehaut, program director at ProPurús.
Brehaut said criminal activity has increased across Peru since 2000, with “hundreds of millions of dollars moving through illegal economies in the Amazon.” Between 2021 and 2024, 6,401 environmental crimes were reported in Ucayali alone, according to data from the Public Ministry of Peru that was cited in the report.
“It is very possible that the [number] of people in a situation of risk is being underreported,” Brehaut said. “We have more and more indications that the number [reported] is lower than what is really happening.”
Mongabay Latam asked Peru’s Ministry of Justice and Human Rights about any measures to combat the spread of violence in the region. In a written response, the ministry said: “According to information from the register on the situation of risk facing human rights defenders, between June 2019 and February 2025, 96 situations of risk have been attended to, involving 134 presumed human rights defenders and three relatives.”
It also said that in terms of “the relationship between situations of risk and illegal economies, 43 situations of risk are linked to drug trafficking, 40 to illegal logging, 17 to land trafficking, three to the trafficking of flora and fauna species, and one to other [factors].”
The ministry also noted that, since Nov. 29, 2021, Ucayali has had a regional board to help protect people who defend human rights.
The Ucayali government didn’t respond to our questions by the time this article was originally published.
The most threatened communities
Impunity for these crimes against Indigenous defenders reflects the violence plaguing Amazonian communities in general. No public information on legal proceedings was available in 10 of the 19 killings recorded in the report. Of the rest, five resulted in the conviction of the assailants. Four of those killings centered on a 2014 case in Alto Tamaya-Saweto, in which logging business owners ordered the killing of Indigenous leaders. The fifth is that of Arbildo Meléndez, killed in April 2020, very early on during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another four cases remain under investigation.
“The process of reaching justice is very slow, very bureaucratic, and many times months or years pass in the investigation stage,” said Jamer López, the ORAU president. “For that reason, [when we] file a complaint or enter a court case, we need to give it a lot of thought.”
López added that communities are “committed to the search for justice,” through ORAU initiatives such as an Indigenous guard corps.
According to the study, the Shipibo-Konibo community has been subjected to the highest number of threats among Indigenous communities. The report cites data from Peru’s Ministry of Culture showing that one in every 100 members of this community faces risk. The Kakataibo community faces perhaps an even more alarming situation: nine members of the community have reportedly been killed in connection to drug trafficking, illegal logging and land grabbing activities. In addition, at least two in every 100 members of this community have faced risk.
The report highlights a similar level of threats to the Asháninka community, with three Indigenous defenders killed and one in every 100 residents facing risk. Within the Yanesha community, two people have been killed, and one in every 100 community members is also at risk.
Land rights
Securing land ownership is the main problem that Indigenous communities and leaders cited when asked about the risks they face, according to the report. In many cases, these take the form of threats to their lives.
The report shows that gaining legal title to a piece of land in a rural area typically takes six to nine months on average for an individual; but for an Indigenous community, it can take several years. For example, the community of Kantash, near Pucallpa, the Ucayali regional capital, has spent more than two decades waiting to be titled.
“In Ucayali alone, there are more than 2 million hectares [about 5 million acres] of communal lands waiting for physical-legal clearance,” the report said. “Physical-legal clearance” refers to finalizing the titling of communities and their inscription in the public land registry. In the case of Puerto Inca province, in Huánuco, the last time an Indigenous community was officially recognized was in 2005.
“There are preferences for individual titling, but very little has been done to complete collective titling,” said Maritza Paredes, principal investigator for the “Indigenous Visions for Climate Justice” project at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. “These practices remain at the regional government level because each time the [land] defenders or leaders go [to denounce] land invasions or problems, even internal [problems], there is indifference; they do not want to solve the conflicts that arise about land, and that puts the lives of these people at a higher risk.”
The report said one of the clearest indicators of land pressure is deforestation. In Ucayali, “the most significant changes in land use include the conversion of forests into fields of coffee, cacao, rice, oil palm, banana, papaya, and livestock pastures.”
The report also identified the building of infrastructure, such as roads and highways, as another source of pressure, saying most of these changes occur on land not classified as forest and without any assigned rights, both on private properties and in Indigenous communities.
Land invasions and grabbing are directly correlated with agricultural expansion and with illegal activities such as drug trafficking. Other related issues include overlapping rights involving forest concessions, permanent production forests, oil blocks and rural properties. Conflicts between communities are also a factor.
“More than 100 communities in Ucayali have been affected by territorial conflicts stemming from the overlapping of land rights, drug trafficking, and the proliferation of private roads,” the report said.
A report by the Ucayali department of forestry and wildlife, or GERFFS, cited in the report, noted that between January and August 2021, 12,345 hectares (30,505 acres) were deforested in this region.
“The report points to illegal logging with a goal of drug trafficking as the main cause of this deforestation,” the ProPurús and ORAU report said.
In 2023, according to the GERFFS report, deforestation in Ucayali reached 27,340 hectares (67,559 acres), with 45% of it related to drug trafficking. “But the ramifications of land trafficking and its connection to other crimes are, without a doubt, larger,” the ProPurús and ORAU report said.
“It is the second stage of extractive expansion in Peru,” Paredes said. “We had the first stage of formal extractive [activity] in large[-scale] mining [and] oil. And now, we are having a second stage of illegal, informal extractive expansion, in which these territories of the Indigenous people are in a very vulnerable situation, and that is the responsibility of the [Peruvian] government.”
The expansion of monoculture plantations, many of them with legal protection, is another constant pressure on Indigenous territories.
“Ucayali is at the forefront of the expansion of monocultures, both legal and illegal; in the latter case, coca. The methods [behind this expansion] — such as land grabbers who ultimately give land to farmers, who unfortunately become coca farmers — have become increasingly sophisticated,” the report said.
Oil palm is also a monoculture that has grown in Ucayali, the region with the largest oil palm production area in the entire Peruvian Amazon, spanning 39,211 hectares (96,892 acres) as of 2024.
“It is the rise in business interests that clash with communal ownership, with the use of traditional land, that breaks laws and takes advantage of land. There are so many cases,” said Brehaut from ProPurús, regarding the frequent disputes around communal territories as a factor in the violence against Indigenous defenders.
Banner image: Lina Ruiz and Lita Rojas outside of the court in Ucayali after hearing the first ruling. Image by Hugo Alejos.
This story was first published here in Spanish on May 21, 2025.
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