My Lords, I share my noble friend’s regret that Ecuador and Bolivia are not included in this Treaty. I am hopeful that the Minister may be able to say something in his concluding remarks about the prospects for them joining at some later date. Of course, everyone welcomes free trade between the EU and third countries as a means of enhancing economic prosperity on both sides and, although it is not a stated object of the treaty, potentially reducing the disparities of wealth and income that are an endemic feature of third-world societies.
I am going to speak exclusively about Peru, having been president of the Peru Support Group for 11 years until I was succeeded a year ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and I declare an interest accordingly. I am indebted to the support group for advice on the effects of the treaty, on which I am going to base my own remarks.
Women and indigenous people have not benefited proportionately up till now from Peru’s impressive rates of growth. There are also huge disparities between the regions. There is no reason to assume that the benefits of this treaty will be applied so as to reduce these inequalities, but if they were so applied then it would be advantageous not only for the poor but for Peruvians at all levels of the economy, and hence for British investors and traders.
The Minister said that the treaty would benefit the UK economy to the tune of £400 million. Has a similar calculation been made, I wonder, on behalf of Peru? Has my noble friend anything to say about the potential benefits for the worst-off in Peruvian society? Similarly, there is no link between the rising national prosperity that will result from the treaty and the improvement in human rights that rest on the flimsy foundation of a single article, as my noble friend has pointed out, providing that respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rule of law constitute an essential element of the agreement. The Minister in another place also referred to Article 8, which deals with the fulfilment of obligations under the treaty generally but is clearly intended to deal primarily with trade matters that are the overwhelmingly predominant purpose of this massive document.
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One apparent advance for Peru’s severely marginalised indigenous people, 78% of whose children are malnourished, was the 2011 consultation law, designed to implement ILO Convention No. 169 on indigenous peoples’ right to prior consultation on government
decisions affecting them. That was 17 years after Peru ratified the convention in 1994, but the law is now being watered down by eligibility requirements beyond those permitted under the convention. The Peruvian Government propose that people would have to speak an indigenous language and to practise communal land ownership to be entitled to the right of prior consultation, but these practices may not have survived the disruptive and discriminatory influence of colonialism and subsequent Administrations. In any case, decisions on which communities are to benefit from ILO 169 are not to be made for at least five years, until information from the 2017 census has been analysed. There are concerns about the lack of transparency and participation in that exercise, to say nothing of the lengthy timeframe. What rights are there to consultation in the intervening five years?
I hope that my noble friend will agree that mechanisms for democratic dialogue such as prior consultation are absolutely essential as a means of reducing Peru’s high incidence of social conflict, which has claimed at least 27 lives under the Humala Administration and is contrary to the interests of British companies in Peru.
As an example of what can happen, the British-registered company, Glencore Xstrata, is in trouble with local leaders and civil society organisations after its workers, assisted by dozens of riot police, evicted the Taco Quehue family from their smallholding and beat them up on 5 November. They were in the way of the company’s Las Bambas pipeline. The human rights NGO Derechos Humanos sin Fronteras documented injuries to 10 family members, including four children aged under six. The family’s “offence” was to object to a change in the route of a highway linked to the pipeline, affecting their farmland and water supply, about which there had been no consultation.
In another case, nine people were detained on 11 November following a protest, which lawyers say was peaceful, against the Peruvian-owned Condestable mine in the Lima region. The protesters, two of whom were pregnant, were charged with kidnapping and extortion, which carry sentences of up to eight years’ imprisonment. One of the pregnant detainees, Jane Cristina Rodriguez, miscarried on the day on which she was arrested. A coalition of national indigenous organisations is demanding the immediate release of the detainees, who say that the mine operators are failing properly to contain waste, undermining their farming through excessive water use and failing to make annual payments of $18,000 to the community that were agreed in 2005.
In July, a government impact study on planned expansion of the controversial Camisea gas field, warning of the risk that the Nanti, Kirineri and Nahua peoples living in a reserve affected by the proposal risked extinction, was withdrawn hours after publication, apparently under pressure from pro-investment interests.
Due to the perceived readiness of the authorities to accede to the demands of foreign investors without listening to the views of local people, inevitably there is widespread social protest against extractive industry in particular, and this leads to the criminalisation of protestors and the use of disproportionate, sometimes lethal, force against them by the police.
During Peru’s universal periodic review, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern at the limited enjoyment of economic social and cultural rights by indigenous peoples and Afro-Peruvian communities, particularly regarding housing, education, health and employment. It recommended adopting a framework law on indigenous peoples, covering all communities. A number of states called for compliance with international norms on the use of lethal force by security forces and the need for timely investigation of any violence. Poland, for instance, stressed the need to refrain from applying unnecessary police force during public demonstrations. Yet despite reliable reports of the killing of demonstrators, no police officers have been investigated for these offences and no protesters have been compensated for injuries caused by police gunfire.
In the debate on this instrument in another place last week, the Minister, Michael Fallon, said that private companies were no longer allowed to hire Peruvian police for their own security purposes, a practice which had been made illegal almost a year ago. However, according to Peruvian human rights organisations which have been in touch with the Peru Support Group since then, it is still going on. In the case of the Xstrata mine in Espinar there was a police station on the company’s property where protesters were detained and ill treated in the summer of 2012 and, according to Congresswoman Verónika Mendoza, the local representative, lawyers were initially denied access to the detainees because they were on private property. Would my noble friend ask our embassy to clarify these matters with local NGOs and members of Congress?
The problem with the scanty reference to human rights in this treaty is that it has no links to any of the other human rights obligations to which Peru has acceded. If another party considers that Peru has failed to fulfil its obligations in accordance with Article 8(2), that party cannot cite evidence from the universal periodic review or reports from the UN special procedures on breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This no doubt explains why the human rights articles in all these EU trade agreements are dead letters and are never invoked.
The Minister in another place says that if there are human rights abuses serious enough to trigger the relevant clause of the agreement, it is for EU mechanisms to collect that information and refer it to the appropriate domestic and international human rights bodies. Can my noble friend cite any instance throughout the history of these trade agreements where such a process has been invoked? Does he consider that automatic inclusion of a pro forma article on human rights in this treaty adds any value to the work that is already being done by Peruvian NGOs, trade unions and members of Congress, together with their international allies and the UN mechanisms, to bring the observance of human rights, and particularly racial equality, in Peru up to the highest international standards?