Committee: 3rd human rights council

Country: Republic of Peru

Topic Area A: Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related

intolerance.

Topic Area B: The rights of indigenous people; reconsidering the declaration and moving
towards a convention.

Represented by University of Piraeus

A) Topic Area A
Peru is a multinational and multicultural country where people of different color,
origin, religion coexist, where many languages are spoken in different regions,
where the various groups of indigenous people of the Amazon and the Andean
have their own traditions and costumes. In this country, where different races
have come together, Peru has adopted many legal frames in order to eliminate
racial discrimination and provide to all its peoples equal opportunities.
Peru is one of the 173 States parties which have signed the International
Convention for the elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and submits
periodic reports on the implementation of the Provisions of the Convention,
consistent to its conventional obligations. Peru is also one of the 53 parties who
have recognized the competence of the Committee under the ar.14 of the
Convention to consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals
claiming to be victims of a violation by Peru, in order to eliminate the
discrimination because of the language differences has translated its constitution
also in the Quechua language. As it has already claimed to its recent report to the
Committee for the elimination of racial discrimination, no claims for racist actions
have been expressed in the country.
Peru believes that racism is a very important social problem that has to be
investigated in depth from all member states as it is a barrier to the protection and
the enforcement of human rights. All people no matter of their origin, sex,
language and religion are equal, as far as education, professional opportunities,
social status, health services are concerned and, as the UN charter points out in
ar.2. Peru hopes for a pragmatic approach to this problem in this conference and
urges all States to collaborate closely in order to reach fruitful solutions. State
parties of any of the rights set forth in the convention
B) Topic Area B
Indigenous peoples in Peru comprise a large number of distinct ethnic who inhabited
the country's present territory prior to its discovery by Europeans around 1500.
Indigenous peoples in Peru form about 45% of the total population (14 million). After
Brazil and New Guinea, Peru has the largest number of intact tribes in the world.
The Republic of Peru fully recognizes the strong need of protecting its peoples from
the threats that have to face nowadays, such as the climate change, the
''deculturisation'' caused by the strong influence of the Western Society on our
peoples and the strong pressure of the private sector that exploits our oil lots and the
Amazon.
In order to preserve its peoples, the Republic of Peru has taken this year really
important decisions which support the autonomy of the tribes and the access to
education and health services. Peru also supports the dialogue and fruitful
negotiations between the indigenous communities and the Western Society in order to
affirm their own values, defend their own traditions, their own customs and language.
Peru signed and ratified the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO
CONVENTION 1989) in 1994 which is the forerunner of the Declaration on the
Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of 1997. Peru also has signed the Declaration.
Peru through legal frameworks and international law respects and defends the rights
of its peoples, especially the rights on their own identity, the rights on their land, the
rights of women and supports the NGO's that take action in collaboration with our
government, such as AIDESEP, which is the first indigenous rights organization in
Peru defending the interests of indigenous peoples in Peru.
Individual indigenous groups have also a variety of governance structures. MATSES,
the Movement in the Amazon for Tribal Subsistence and Economic Sustainability, is
an indigenous peoples rights organization that is working for the cultural survival of
indigenous people in our country.
The Republic of Peru believes that the protection of the indigenous peoples is a very
important aspect of the protection of human rights on the whole. Human dignity and
the prohibition of any discrimination as far as religion, language, culture and origin
are concerned and are underlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(ar.2), which Peru has voted in favor in the UN General Assembly on 10 December
1948.
Last but not least, Peru is willing to cooperate closely with all states under the UN
umbrella in order to adopt efficient policies that will protect the indigenous people
globally and fight for their rights. For this reason, Peru believes that the Declaration
should be transformed into a Convention so that their rights will be protected more
efficiently.