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New anti-NGO law pushes Peru’s democracy deeper into ‘invisible crisis’ [1]

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Date: 2025-05

With a single law, the Peruvian government last month launched an unprecedented attack on independent journalism outlets and many non-profit organisations that receive foreign funding.

Law 32.301, approved by Congress and signed by president Dina Boluarte on 15 April, makes it impossible for individuals or communities who have been victims of state crimes or have otherwise had their rights violated to seek justice if their legal assistance is financed by foreign foundations or Peruvian civil associations that receive such funds.

The law also establishes the principle of prior censorship, requiring any publications that receive money from overseas to have their work pre-approved by a state agency. This is banned in Peru’s constitution.

Failing to comply with the new law could see organisations hit by the highest fines in Peru’s judicial system.

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The law expands the powers of the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI), created in 2002, to authorise or deny the activities of civil society organisations and independent media that receive international funding.

“It's a way of censoring journalism,” Milagros Salazar, founder and director of Peruvian investigative journalism site Convoca, told openDemocracy.

“If you receive a single dollar, you have to register with the APCI,” she explained. “Projects related to public oversight, such as journalistic investigations, are [then] subject to political control, because you have to submit a plan that must be approved in advance by the APCI, and only if it is approved can you use the funds.”

This affects all media outlets registered as non-profit civil associations that receive funds from abroad, including private foundations. “In the Peruvian ecosystem, independent digital media outlets have found international organisations as a source of funding because commercial advertising generally does not reach them,” said Clara Elvira Ospina, journalist and founder of Epicentro TV.

At a ceremony where she signed the law into effect, President Boluarte said: “This law will also protect the supreme interests of democracy and national unity and subject a minority of NGOs that act against the interests of our country, sowing hatred and attacking our system, to exhaustive scrutiny.”

The work carried out by independent media in Peru is irreplaceable.

For example, Convoca, a media outlet that receives foreign funding, last year led a cross-border investigation that revealed that half of the gold exported by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela in the past decade was laundered through mechanisms involving luxury jewellery stores and technology companies. The laundering, which took place in part due to the negligence of the authorities, destroyed ecosystems and damaged local and indigenous populations.

The report involved the collaboration of seven media outlets from five countries and won the international Premio Rey de España en Periodismo award. Under the new law, similar crimes, corruption scandals or environmental destruction in Peru will likely no longer be revealed.

The country’s mainstream publications are either linked to economic, religious or political powers or lack the resources to carry out investigations, while the majority of independent media is reliant on foreign funding in some form.

“We would have to report on what we are going to investigate, how we are going to investigate, and which organisations we are going to investigate with,” Salazar said.

“All this information has to be included in the plan submitted to the APCI, [but] it could put our sources at risk and could be leaked from the APCI to powerful groups that do not want us to investigate.”

It will also no longer be possible to use international funds to claim access to public information through administrative or judicial channels, a common journalistic tool. “And journalists, increasingly harassed with defamation or slander lawsuits, will not be able to receive assistance for their legal defence,” Ospina said.

Shielding impunity

While everybody in Peru will be affected by an effective ban on government scrutiny, it is communities and individuals who have had their rights violated and lack the resources to seek justice who will bear the brunt of the changes – particularly if the perpetrator was the state.

The new legislation expressly prohibits international cooperation funds from being used to “advise, assist or finance, in any form or manner, administrative, judicial or other actions, in national or international fora, against the Peruvian state”.

Lawsuits against private companies will also be affected. “The law defines as a serious offence any activity carried out by an NGO in the field of legal defence in judicial, criminal, administrative or other matters with international cooperation funds,” explained Tania Pariona, executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinating Committee of Peru (CNDDHH).

The CNDDHH brings together 78 organisations, some of which are responsible for bringing high-profile legal cases such as over the state’s role in massacres and forced sterilisations committed in the 1990s, as well as environmental crimes, gender-based violence and violations of the rights of indigenous peoples, among many others, committed by both the state and private companies.

Breaching the law could result in fines of up to 500 tax units (UIT) – equivalent to about $700,000. Pariona pointed out that this is higher than “any [other] type of monetary fines in our country, even for money laundering”, which has a cap of 100 UIT.

All sources who spoke to openDemocracy said a fine of this nature would be impossible for any Peruvian civil society organisation to pay. Pariona, a prominent indigenous activist, told openDemocracy that the impact is already being felt, with some organisations choosing to “stop providing legal defence and give up being lawyers for the victims”.

“We have also heard the concerns of victims’ families,” Pariona added. “They have called us to ask if we are going to continue with their cases”.

The new law may put a stop to the 28-year fight for justice for Celia Ramos Durand, who died as a result of being sterilised without her consent in 1997, when she was just 31. Her three daughters are set to finally have a key hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) on 22 May.

Some 300,000 women and 22,000 men are estimated to have been forcibly sterilised in Peru between 1990 and 2000. The policy, introduced by Alberto Fujimori's government, was intended to reduce the birth rate among poor families in rural areas. As of December, more than 8,000 people had reported their cases to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights' Registry of Victims of Forced Sterilisation – but they have obtained neither justice nor reparation.

Celia Ramos’ daughters would not have reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights without the feminist group DEMUS (Study for the Defence of Women's Rights), supported by two regional legal defence organisations, the Centre for Reproductive Rights and the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).

After Law 32.301 was passed, the Inter-American Court asked the Peruvian government to guarantee DEMUS’ participation in the hearing without fear of reprisals. Enforcing the law against the organisation, the court warned, “would not only constitute a form of reprisal prohibited by Article 53 of the Court's Rules of Procedure, but could also affect the right to defence of the alleged victims in this case”. The government responded by saying that this hearing will not be affected by the law, although some observers fear this may not be true.

For CEJIL, which is handling this and other sterilisation cases in the inter-American justice system, the new law will make it very difficult to move forward because such cases rely on the local activism and knowledge of Peruvian organisations.

“All international cases have a national component, which we work on together with other historical allies in Peru and in all countries,” said lawyer Florencia Reggiardo, director of CEJIL’s programme for the Andean Region, North America and the Caribbean. “It’s impossible to carry out this work properly without them.”

But there is something more dangerous than the halting of these legal cases: Peru's Congress and presidency are closing all doors to justice.

Peru’s top prosecutor has accused President Boluarte of causing the deaths of 49 protesters and injuring hundreds more during anti-government social unrest that erupted in late 2022, following the removal from office of then-president Pedro Castillo. The Human Rights Association (APRODEH), which represents some of the victims, last year reported these alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court – a process it would not have been able to carry out under the new law due to the support from the International Federation for Human Rights. The ICC could launch a preliminary examination of the reports, which could take years to complete.

Boluarte also faces six other investigations in Peru for corruption and other irregularities. Her freedom is in the hands of the Peruvian Congress, which has so far not lifted her immunity.

“In Peru, there is an invisible democratic crisis,” Reggiardo told openDemocracy. “There’s no understanding of how institutions are being destroyed, how many have been co-opted, the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman's Office, the National Board of Justice that elects judges.”

Peru last year passed an amnesty law, which says all war crimes and crimes against humanity committed before July 2002 can no longer be prosecuted. This includes massacres, torture, and extrajudicial killings carried out during the two decades of conflict between the state and the leftist guerrilla groups, Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, which left almost 70,000 dead and missing, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The law also bans prosecutions over forced sterilisations and even cases that have already been tried, where the Inter-American Court is trying to ensure those found guilty serve their sentences without being pardoned.

This was the case for the massacres in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighbourhood in 1992 and at La Cantuta University in 1992, both of which were intended to target members of Shining Path. In 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the massacres, which killed a total of 17 people, disappeared eight and left four seriously injured.

The trials were possible because the victims and their families brought their complaints to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights with the support of CEJIL and Peruvian activist groups, including Asociación Pro-Derechos Humanos, Instituto de Defensa Legal, Fundación Ecuménica para el Desarrollo y la Paz, Comisión de Derechos Humanos and CNDDHH.

But in 2017, Fujimori was pardoned by the president on grounds of ill health, though jailed again the following year after social unrest and a ruling by the inter-american court. In March 2022, Peru’s Constitutional Court upheld the pardon, and Fujimori was released in December 2023. The subsequent amnesty law meant all other proceedings against him were dropped, and the former dictator died a free man in September 2024.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights had previously issued orders to the Peruvian state against passing the amnesty law and pardoning Fujimori, arguing that crimes against humanity are not subject to statutes of limitations and cannot be amnestied or pardoned. Having ignored this, the Peruvian state is now in contempt of court.

For Reggiardo, “in Peru, there is no possibility of access to justice for victims”.

Democratic erosion

Peru is far from the only country in Latin America legislating against organised civil society groups. Last year, similar laws were adopted in Venezuela, Paraguay and Nicaragua, while decrees with similar restrictions have been in force in Ecuador for the past decade and a bill that would create a regime to control NGOs has been going through the country’s Parliament for several years.

“The aim [of these countries’ governments] is to silence dissent and hinder progress, because it also takes a lot of time to find ways to continue functioning, thinking about forms of self-protection and survival,” Reggiardo explained.

This is one way that democracy is being eroded in Latin America. Others include the persecution of journalists and activists, the suspension of due process and the right to defence, and the repression of social protest in countries as diverse as El Salvador and Argentina.

Some of these tactics against civil society are inspired by Russia, which in 2012 passed a law that classifies NGOs receiving funding from abroad as ‘foreign agents’. These organisations can face up to five years in prison if they do not report their activities in strict accordance with the established requirements. The law was expanded in 2020 to include individuals involved in political activities.

The Nicaraguan model draws directly from Moscow. In 2022, the regime banned dozens of organisations, with a particular focus on feminists, and in 2024, it adopted ‘foreign agents’ legislation similar to Russia’s and introduced a ban on the independence of NGOs that forces the organisations to work with government agencies on projects.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/peru-anti-ngo-law-32-301-democracy-crisis-journalism-foreign-funding/

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