Peru’s Amazon Cannot Survive Legalized Delay, by Fransiscus Nanga Roka

One mining registry should make it easier for workers to become legal. There is the risk that “formalization” becomes the administrative language of impunity when renewed temporary extensions are reportedly protecting destructive activities. The Nanay communities of Peru do not make that possibility something regional law can avoid.

The orders with which their action against Peru arrived at the Court of Justice of the Andean Community were admitted on 15 July 2026 and notified on 20 July. Meanwhile, CONACCUNAY and seven residents question state inaction on illegal mining and related crimes. The admission opened the door for judicial proceedings, but it did not determine Peru’s legal responsibility. When Associated Press reported the development, their requested precautionary measures, such as the temporary suspension of REINFO, were still undecided.

The legal foundations deserve accuracy. 733–779) as the Andean anti-illegal mining policy, but it was Decision 774 (not 744). The complaint further references regional provisions on customs cooperation, mercury information and transnational organized crime. What makes this noteworthy is that communities are able to challenge government inaction through binding integration law.

An October 2023 supplementary legal opinion from the Andean General Secretariat’s Dictamen 007-2025 suggested that Peru had failed to implement mechanisms targeting the instruments and proceeds of illegal mining and related crimes. The report also found through repeated extensions of the formalisation process incompatible with regional obligations. That administrative finding is significant — but it differs from a court ruling that closes the case.

The political accusation is that the state’s own regulatory set-up may be inhibiting its pledge to fight back against the violence it claims to manage.

Peru must answer with evidence. Of all registered operators, how many meet environmental and operational requirements? Which entries conceal prohibited activities? Who pays for dredges, provides mercury and gold and legitimises dirty money?

Destroying machinery can demonstrate enforcement. These operations, without usurping the financial networks that replace it, risk being an expensive theatre.

Communities also deserve scientific precision. For example, dredge counts and mercury-release estimates must specify the dates, methods and uncertainties they are based on. Instead of settling the dispute over whether government numbers are true or false, public anger should call for verifiable water, sediment and fish testing by independent third parties. Polluters get a loophole from weak evidence.

Five measures should follow immediately.

First, audit REINFO publicly. Validation of operators, sites, ownership and compliance. Defer ineligible applications for due process, set binding cut-off days, and offer legitimate artisanal miners a genuine pathway to legality. It is a policy failure that would mark you with permanent provisional status.

Second, explore the broader gold economy. Track proceeds, mercury supply chains and beneficial owners together with prosecutors, financial-intelligence authorities, customs and other neighbors. The state seizes assets where there is a legal justification and with judicial safeguards.

Third, put in place community-based environmental monitoring by accredited laboratories. Publish results, help with safe-water if needed, and determine compensatory health assessments without awaiting final litigation.

Fourth, implement protective measures for Indigenous leaders and witnesses in collaboration with them. If reporting criminal activity only places residents at risk for retaliation, enforcement cannot succeed.

Fifth, convert any relevant regional ruling into a funded plan of compliance with deadlines, oversight by an independent body and public reports on progress. A decision without enforcement would simply write a fancier version of capitulation.

The implication of this case law breakthrough may be profound: regional economic integration, held by states as a means to accountability for economic failures, could also act as an instrument of accountability for governments with respect to failed rivers and livelihoods.

However, a landmark lawsuit does not replace protection on the ground. Do not wait for a judicial defeat to fix demonstrable failures in Peru

The Nanay communities should not be spending years in court trying to get a government to do what has already agreed to do.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia