Germany’s KfW Development Bank is doing it again - failing to respond to a plea from indigenous people about human rights violations in the remote Amazon. In 2022 and 2023 it took the bank eleven months to reply to a letter from AIDESEP, a Peruvian indigenous federation representing more than 2,500 indigenous communities. This year it has been over two months since AIDESEP and six other indigenous federations wrote to KfW, but the bank still hasn’t responded.
A few years ago, the issue was that the Germans were about to start disbursing the first of 60 million euros to Peru’s national forests agency, SERFOR, under a “sustainable” logging program that is part of a tropical forest conservation initiative ostensibly intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This was at the same time SERFOR was ignoring calls to annul almost 50 illegally-established logging concessions - the majority overlapping the proposed Yavari Mirim Reserve for indigenous people living in “isolation.”
This year is same-same, but different. 4.3 million euros have now been channelled to SERFOR, according to KfW, but AIDESEP et al are urging the bank to suspend any further payments because the forests agency has been “violating the fundamental rights of our brothers, the indigenous people in isolation.” Principally, the federations’s accusations centre on SERFOR’s role in actively blocking the Yavari Mirim Reserve’s establishment.
As I reported last month, in an article highlighting how AIDESEP et al have also written to the Norwegian government and others about this issue, SERFOR, at a critical meeting in September, voted against approving a report that is required for the reserve proposal to move forward. In addition, agency representatives claimed no indigenous people in “isolation” exist in the reserve area and circulated a report claiming it is overlapped by logging concessions, when really those concessions were annulled after successful legal action by indigenous federation ORPIO.
The seven federations - AIDESEP and ORPIO, together with ARPI, COMARU, CORPIAA, FENAMAD and ORAU - didn’t mince their words in their letter to KfW. They accused SERFOR of putting the exploitation of natural resources ahead of human rights and therefore being complicit in “historical forms of ethnocide.”
Moreover, for years SERFOR has also blocked the expansion of a reserve for indigenous people in “isolation” elsewhere in Peru, in the Madre de Dios region, by refusing to relocate or annul numerous logging concessions. What that has meant is SERFOR allowing timber companies to operate in remote areas of the Amazon where the indigenous people have not only not given their consent to such operations, but could be at immense risk if contact with them is made.
There are also a number of logging concessions overlapping the Sierra del Divisor Occidental Reserve for indigenous people in “isolation”, which was established last year. Although it is the regional governments that create and license concessions, SERFOR is responsible for delimiting the areas where the regional governments can do so and, under a 2017 law, it has the explicit power to annul concessions.
The federations didn’t refer to either the Madre de Dios or Sierra del Divisor Occidental cases in their letter to KfW, but they did also accuse SERFOR of being part of a wider “campaign” intended to “not recognise the rights and existence of people in isolation, block the creation of new reserves for them, and annul existing ones.”
“Of course, we are taking the topics mentioned by the federations very seriously,” says a KfW spokesperson. “We are currently planning different activities to get a completer and more detailed picture of the situation. We will involve an independent expert to work out a report on the issue. Further. we do plan a KfW mission to Peru to address the topics. Decisions on any further measures will be made after the report has been prepared.”