A delegation from the Organization of American States' Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belem do Para Convention, known as MESECVI, has been in Peru since September 4 to investigate widespread sexual violence against girls and adolescents in Condorcanqui, a province in the Amazonas region, Peruvian lawyer and columnist Julissa Mantilla wrote.
The mission, invited by Janet Tello, president of Peru's Judicial Power, has visited the towns of Santa Maria de Nieva, Cenepa and Rio Santiago, Mantilla said.
What MESECVI examines
MESECVI is the body of the Organization of American States that monitors compliance with the Belem do Para Convention, the inter-American treaty obliging member states to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. Condorcanqui, in Peru's northern Amazon, has a large Awajun indigenous population.
Mantilla wrote that the situation in the province is neither new nor unknown to authorities, who she said have failed to respond adequately. She recalled remarks by former Education Minister Morgan Quero, who addressed the issue by referring to cultural practices, which she called especially serious given that the ministry itself had published a report in 2017 acknowledging that most victims were girls under 14 and that the aggressors were part of their social and family environment.
Ombudsman's findings
A 2024 report by Peru's Defensoria del Pueblo, the national Ombudsman's office, found that 64% of investigations into sexual violence in schools had lapsed under the statute of limitations, despite the cases having been reported to the Regional Education Directorate of Amazonas, according to Mantilla.
Mantilla also pointed to years of advocacy by Rosalina Pioc, president of the Awajun Women's Council, who she said has raised these abuses and the tactics used by aggressors to evade justice in every forum available to her. Mantilla wrote that the aggressors have counted on the complicity of some local authorities and, above all, on the impunity that neglect guarantees.
No comment from the government
According to Mantilla, Awajun girls and adolescents were not mentioned in the president's inauguration speech, and neither the president nor the foreign minister has commented publicly on the MESECVI mission.
Mantilla wrote that it was regrettable that these demands for justice had reached Washington more easily than the ears of Peru's first elected woman president.
