political context

Peru is the third largest country in South America. There are three main geographical regions: the narrow desert strip on the Pacific coast, the highlands of the Andes and the rainforest of the Amazon basin on the East.
 
The population is currently estimated to be 28 million, of which more than 70 per cent live in urban areas. Around 45 per cent are indigenous, 35 per cent mestizo, 15 per cent white, and 5 per cent black. Spanish is the official language, while Quechua and Aymara are widely spoken in the Andes and also have official status. More than 50 indigenous languages are spoken in the Amazon region.

Peru is a presidential republic. Under the constitution of 1993, a single chamber with 120 members is elected every five years. A long political and institutional crisis, with ten years of neo-liberal and authoritarian policies, took a dramatic turn in early 2001 when President Alberto Fujimori resigned and the congress removed him for being morally unfit for office. Fujimori fled to Japan, but has recently been extradited to face charges of corruption and human rights violations in Peru.
 
Peru is a land rich in minerals and the Peruvian economy is mainly based on the extraction and export of copper, zinc, lead, silver, iron and gold. Mining contributes about half the country's export revenue but does not benefit the majority of the population - on the contrary, it generates environmental destruction and social instability. Other important sectors are fishing and fishmeal, forestry and agriculture.

Included by the UN among the first five 'mega-bio-diverse' countries, Peru hosts 84 of the 104 identified ecosystems and 28 of the 32 known climatic zones, which allow most varieties of crops to be grown. Even though in the Andes, agriculture is largely a subsistence activity, the extraction of natural resources from the Amazon forest has severely affected its eco-system and indigenous peoples, who remain among the poorest and most marginalised sectors of the population in Peru.
 
In August 2003, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) presented its report on the process of violence due to the internal armed conflict between Shining Path and the military between 1980 and 2000. In its conclusion the TRC affirms that the death toll was 69,280 and it established that there was an: 'obvious relation between the situation of poverty and exclusion and the probability of being a victim of violence.'

The election of Alejandro Toledo on an anti-corruption platform in 2001 raised hopes. But President Toledo has struggled to transform an economy weighed down by the heavy burden of foreign debt - which absorbs about 27 per cent of the national budget - without challenging the social and economic inequalities of a free-market system.

Therefore, even though the macroeconomic figures are better, 54 per cent of the population lives in poverty, with widespread chronic malnutrition and no, or limited, access to basic services. This has led to a frustration towards democracy and increased demands from different sectors which, in turn, has created general social upheaval and often violence.

Despite adverse social and economic conditions, Peruvian civil movements struggle to create the space for citizens to play a key role in building the road to democracy within a new political culture. A process known as 'Mesas de Lucha contra la Pobreza' involved decentralisation and creation of over 1400 consultative roundtables through which civil society, at regional and local levels, worked on initiatives to end poverty.
 
Alan Garcia, of the American Popular Revolutionary Party (APRA), was elected president for five years in June 2006, with a small 36 seat majority, so the 120-member congress is highly fractious. When Garcia was president before from 1985 to 1990, inflation topped two million per cent, gross domestic product shrunk by over 10 per cent, while drug trafficking and terrorism burgeoned. Left-wing candidates gained most of the regional governments in local and regional authority elections in November 2006. Peru's GDP has nearly doubled since the year 2000, rising from $52 billion to nearly $100 billion, one of the few countries in the world currently with high GDP growth and negligible inflation. Much of the export earnings - close to 60% - are represented by minerals, with Peru as the world's top producer of silver. The booming economy, however, has not translated into improved social conditions for the vast majority of Peruvians. The administration aims to bring poverty down from 47 per cent to 40 per cent by 2011. The government concluded a free-trade agreement (Peru Trade Promotion Agreement) with the United States in 2006.
 
There are major social problems concerning extractive industries. According to the government Human Rights Ombudsman's office, there were 75 social conflicts in 2006. Of these conflicts, 31 per cent involved conflicts between communities and extractive companies, mainly hydrocarbon and mineral companies.

They include violent conflicts at oil installations in the northern Amazon (Argentina's Pluspetrol), the Yanacocha gold mine (US-based Newmont Mining) and Rio Blanco copper project (Britain's Monterrico Metals, recent sold to China's Zijin Consortium). Farmers who grow coca, the raw ingredient from which cocaine is extracted, have been protesting the government's eradication plans (the government's goal is to eliminate 80 per cent of the 50,000 hectares of coca) with increasingly violent actions. The government is attempting to frame the debate within the narco-terrorist argument used by the United States.

Congress passed legislation in 2006 that requires non-governmental organisations to register with the Peruvian International Cooperation Agency and that their plans mesh with the government's development guidelines and priorities. The National Association of Centres, a network of NGOs, has filed suit against the legislation with the constitutional tribunal, Peru's top court.