Protecting Environmental Human Rights NGOs
The Challenge to Peru’s NGO Law
Nearly fifty countries have enacted or proposed restrictive laws aimed at weakening civil society through strict regulation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), especially human rights and environmental organizations. Countries that have enacted these laws tend to be concentrated in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Africa, according to a survey of laws regulating NGOs.
Peru's NGO law
In 2006, the government of Peru became the first democracy in Latin America to enact a law of this type. The new law (actually a set of amendments to an existing law) was likened by Human Rights Watch to a law approved in Russia earlier that year amidst wide criticism from the international community.
Among other things, the amendments to Peru's law obliged NGOs to register and agree to extensive government control, and gave the government the power to punish NGOs when - in the government’s eyes alone- they disturbed the public order or damaged private or public property. The potential penalties included revoking the NGO’s license and prohibiting its directors and legal representatives from participating in another NGO for five years.
International human rights groups condemned the law even before it was passed, noting that the law violated the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of association, and that the sanctions allowed by the amendments would have a tremendous chilling effect on participation of individuals in NGO activities.
EDLC joins in the challenge to the law
The Association of Peruvian NGOs (ANC), supported in its petition by the signatures of over 8,700 Peruvians, challenged the law before the nation’s Constitutional Tribunal. A group of thirty members of Peru's National Congress filed a similar legal challenge, and the two cases were consolidated. EDLC was asked to prepare an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) legal brief in support of ANC’s challenge. Because EDLC and NGOs in Peru believed that environmental NGOs were among the groups targeted by the new law, EDLC agreed.
The restrictions imposed on NGO activity violate core values that are essential for robust debate and participation in matters of public concern, including environmental decision-making.
- Amicus curiae brief submitted by EDLC to Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal