- Indigenous organizations in Peru and Brazil are joining forces to push their respective governments to safeguard the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, which covers 16 million hectares (39.5 million acres) across both countries.
- The cross-border initiative aims to protect the ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact who travel freely across both borders and are threatened by those who engage in illegal activity in or near their territories.
- The Indigenous organizations plan to create a commission, made up of groups from both sides of the border, to exchange knowledge and define cross-border Indigenous policies for the protection of isolated peoples, such as measures to prevent territorial invasions and collaborate on health matters.
Indigenous organizations from Peru and Brazil are joining forces to push their respective governments to safeguard a 16-million-hectare (39.5-million-acre) territorial corridor in the Amazon that stretches from the Tapiche River in Peru to the Yavarí River in Brazil.
The 15 Indigenous organizations, which include the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO) from Peru and the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javarí Valley from Brazil, plan to create a binational commission to define cross-border policies for the protection of peoples in isolation and initial contact (PIACI) who live inside the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor and cross freely between both countries. The corridor spreads across the departments of Loreto and Ucayali in Peru and Amazonas and Acre in Brazil and is also home to the greatest diversity of primates in the world, including spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) and pygmy marmosets (Callithrix pygmaea).
“We proposed the creation of a binational commission made up of Indigenous organizations to strengthen the protection strategies of the PIACI, as well as to call for and demand urgent action from countries to stop the territorial invasions,” said Apu Miguel Manihuari Tamani, an Indigenous leader who forms part of ORPIO’s board of directors. “[There’s a] need to articulate efforts for the monitoring, management and surveillance of the territory between Indigenous organizations, both at the national and cross-border levels.”