Watershed in Peru: Challenging Impunity
When Diana Avila, Project Counselling Service's (PCS) Executive Director, left Ottawa last September to travel back to Peru, little did she know that one week later, she would be celebrating a historic day in Peru's quest for justice. After years of work, human rights defenders had succeeded in persuading the Chilean Supreme Court to extradite former Peruvian president Fujimori to his home country. There he would face charges of human rights violations and corruption stemming from his decade of authoritarian rule, which spanned the latter half of Peru's twenty years of armed conflict. This was a watershed for many Peruvians, an important step in challenging the near-total impunity of government officials and the military for human rights violations.
The announcement also represented an important symbolic victory for women affected by sexual violence during the conflict. Although Peru's 2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report found that sexual violence against women by the military during the armed conflict was "systematic and generalized," constituting a crime against humanity, Peru's judicial system has yet to accord such a status to these crimes. With the support of Inter Pares and PCS, women's and human rights organizations developed a proposal to address this gap by amending Peru's penal code. Recently, working with the Congressional Women's Caucus, they succeeded in having the proposed amendment submitted for Congressional consideration. And in November, the local attorney for Huancavelica, one of the regions most impacted in the conflict, agreed that the legal cases of seven indigenous women accusing the military of sexual crimes will finally proceed to court.
As a result of years of awareness-raising by human rights organizations and survivors, affected women are also beginning to obtain support from their own communities and local organizations. A few years ago, human rights organizations were ill-prepared to address the issue of sexual violence during armed conflict. While still a difficult and largely taboo subject, the agenda of justice and reparations for women survivors is being taken up by organizations of displaced people, torture victims, families of the disappeared, and even by local and regional authorities.
These may seem like small steps on the road to justice and reparations, but along the way, Peruvian women and their organizations are becoming agents of change for themselves, their communities and their children. Fujimori's extradition represents one victory in the struggle against impunity for human rights violations in Peru - and women survivors and the organizations that accompany them are working to ensure that it will be followed by many more.
| Reviewed February 5, 2008 |  |
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