On December 1st and 2nd, leaders from indigenous groups of the Andean and Amazon region of Peru and Colombia met in Bogotá, in a meeting sponsored by Akubadaura and CESR. The main goal of the event was to reflect on the most pressing problems faced by indigenous peoples in the region, their relationship with the fiscal policies that the States have been promoting in the post-pandemic recovery, and to collaboratively design potential courses of action.
As their main concerns, participants highlighted issues including the intensification of policies to promote extractive industries' investments in their territories, the lack of measures to ensure a quality bilingual education for their children and the increase in school dropouts caused by virtual education, the lack of effective measures for the restitution of ancestral lands, the absence of effective participation mechanisms in the elaboration and implementation of public policies, including fiscal measures.
The meeting concluded with a discussion about the main courses of action that indigenous peoples and movements could adopt to face these problems. They particularly emphasized the need to strengthen their capacity building to achieve effective participation in negotiations with governments, the importance of demanding robust diagnoses to combat the invisibility of the peoples in the region, as well as to advance towards processes of internal coordination and concerted negotiation with third parties.
CESR presented the Principles for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy and the OPERA framework as useful tools to support the claims of indigenous peoples in national and international forums.
For more information about the work that CESR is doing with its partners in the Andean region, click here.