The ability to protect human rights, civil liberties, gender equality, and environmental justice has been disproportionately affected by Peruvian lawmakers' new regulatory push against civil society organisations (CSOs). On March 12, the Peruvian Congress approved, with no further debate and adding draconian new articles on the clock, a reform that prepares a regulatory overreach on the work and goals of non-governmental organisations. This move came from a profoundly unpopular de-facto government coalition of conservative and opportunistic political parties aligned behind an illiberal, anti-rights agenda.
What's happening?
At the core of these modifications lays a patently unconstitutional mechanism that punishes the support and funding of litigation against the Peruvian State, that CSOs display in favour of vulnerable populations and individuals. Even NGOs would be barred from acting in an advisory capacity on human rights matters. Strategic litigation has been a key line of work for many CSOs that seek to provide resources and expertise to peasant communities and Indigenous populations' environmental justice agendas, victims of human rights violations, women and LGTBQ+ organisations and, in general, whoever has been wronged in her rights and cannot access justice. According to the Human Rights National Coordinator, a leading NGO, Peruvian CSOs have been able to support 113 legal victories in favour of human rights violation victims since 1991. Most of them are paradigmatic cases litigated in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Adding to these efforts are numerous lawsuits and administrative procedures under Peruvian law that CSOs have supported in different ways to protect the right to justice. This work is perfectly aligned with and protected by the Peruvian Constitution and international law.
The renewed law also disciplines CSOs that allegedly carry out activities framed as threats to public and national security. The intended vague phrasing allows for a discretionary and arbitrary understanding of CSOs' work in relation to the stated faults and infractions. It is unclear by whom, how and under which criteria national security will be determined, but it is naïve to think that compromised politicians and security apparatuses will not exercise this power. It alarmingly opens the door for effective repression disguised as regulation.
On the other hand, the new provisions task the regulator, the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI), with granular oversight of project design, workstream, and implementation, purposefully creating bottlenecks, delays, and discretionary overreach on CSOs’ activities. Failure to comply with unreasonable project management parameters entails disproportionate fines meant to curtail the organisations' operations or even force their closure. This is not meant to advance accountability on the work of civil society but to cripple its functioning.
The modified law also grants the executive branch power over the regulator's work through a director appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Minister. Political oversight is good if consensual and professional, based on a participatory agenda predicated on rights and fair development aid. But these modifications open the window to regulatory capture by cronies of further administrations tasked with harassing political opponents and unleashing draconian impulses to close the civil space.
Furthermore, the de facto government coalition, counting on the accepting collaboration of a corruption-ridden and banal president Boluarte, has legislated to extend impunity to politicians' illegal activities, eliminate the ban on private funding of political parties, and recklessly deregulate ample economic sectors after grotesque and open lobbying of vested interests. So, it is not at the heart of lawmakers' political agenda a virtuous push for regulation and transparency but an attempt to shrink accountability.
Shrinking civic space under the guise of strengthening accountability
Even though international cooperation and development have a problematic and challenged genealogy of colonialism and civilizatory drive, CSOs' place in democracy has been increasingly one of performing a role of public goods and services providers, often bridging the retreat or deficit of state capacity, helping to develop these capabilities, and more importantly, supporting spaces of political diversity and bottom-up contestation.
In that sense, transparency and regulation have been welcomed and practised. In fact, APCI has been overseeing NGOs for more than a decade now, and high levels of compliance have been the norm. In the case of organisations receiving funding from public bodies and foundations, compliance standards not only align with Peruvian law but also with the donors' regulations, which are often more exigent. The civic space is populated by a diversity of organisations, varying in agendas, political orientation, size, reach, history, and goals. It is not, by any means, a progressive-dominated sphere. Many conservative organisations, corporations and churches have established CSOs to advance their views better. With the modifications to the International Cooperation law, the risk of the regulator's political instrumentation is now greater. It is in plain sight now that this is not a move to strengthen institutions and accountability in the civil society sector but to advance an authoritarian grip on dissent, political diversity, and justice agendas.
These changes have been done in the name of an obscure and authoritarian understanding of sovereignty, one that conflates the nation’s existence and effective agency in search of the common good with domestic impunity for politicians, human rights abusers, rogue corporations, and extremists. Since the inception of this bill into the parliamentary process last year, many of the most important embassies, delegations, and donors in the country have made public their opposition to the modification, citing a satisfactory and transparent work relationship with their Peruvian counterparts. In the face of its approval, leading Indigenous organisations, NGOs, and investigative journalism outlets have reported and sounded the alarm on the declining state of the civil liberties in the country, vowing to protect democratic rights from the illegitimate ruling coalition. This is now a crucial call and task nationally and worldwide.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Rafael Barrio de Mendoza Zevallos
PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge
Rafael Barrio de Mendoza Zevallos is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a Peruvian social scientist interested in the multiple connections between environmental regimes, technological transitions, and the formation of public truth. He is currently a PhD Student in the Sociology Department at the University of Cambridge.
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