Peru court case: rights of the Marañón River

Summary

In March 2024, the Superior Court of Justice of Loreto, Peru ruled in favor of recognizing the Marañón River, a vital tributary flowing through Peruvian lands, as an entity with inherent rights, including the right to exist, flow, and remain free of contamination. The ruling also names the Kukama people as representatives, guardians and defenders of the Marañón and its tributaries. This monumental achievement is the result of a legal battle led by Kukama Indigenous women, who for years have fought tirelessly against pollution and oil spills that threaten the life of the river.

In September 2021, Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) – an Indigenous Federation of Kukama-Kukamiria Women in Peru’s northern Amazon region – filed a lawsuit against the Peruvian State (the Ministry of Environment, the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute, the National Water Authority, and the Ministry of Energy and Mines), and the state oil company Petroperú, over systematic oil spills into the Marañon’s catchment area that impact the Marañon River and the Kukama communities whose lives and livelihoods depend on it. The lawsuit called for recognition of the Marañón River a subject of rights—the strategy being that if the river itself has rights, rather than just the Kukama people, whose rights are routinely violated, then perhaps things can actually change for the better. The Kukama women argued that the failure of the Peruvian State and Petroperú company to prevent and clean up oil spills constitutes a violation of their fundamental and constitutional rights, including “freedom of religious belief” and “the right to cultural identity and social, cultural and physical integrity of the indigenous peoples, expressed in the spiritual relationship that the Kukama peoples have with the rivers.” Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, president of HKK, explains that the Marañon River is not just “fundamental” to the Kukamas’ lives and existence, but “sacred” too.

The lawsuit requested the court recognize “the Marañón River and its tributaries as subjects of rights, with intrinsic value, which must be protected, especially in attention to the spiritual value that this river has for indigenous peoples in general, and especially for the Kukama indigenous people.” These rights include: a) Right to exist; b) Right to flow; c) Right to exercise their essential functions with the ecosystem; d) Right to be free from all contamination; f) Right to native biodiversity; g) Right to restoration; h) Right to the regeneration of their natural cycles; i) Right to the conservation of its ecological structure and functions; j) Right to protection, preservation and recovery; and k) Right to representation. The lawsuit also requests “recognition and appointment of the State and indigenous organizations as guardians, defenders and representatives of the Marañón River and its tributaries” and requires that a “qualified body be appointed, representative of the indigenous organizations of Loreto as ‘Guardians of the Marañón River’, that acts on behalf of the river and its interests.” (page 4)

The legal argument behind the lawsuit argues that the Marañon River should be granted such rights because of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, which is legally binding on Peru under the Inter-American human rights system (page 37). It also contends that Article 3 of the Peruvian Constitution recognizes the possibility of recognizing new fundamental rights, which it calls unnamed rights, provided that they arise from principles and values included in the Constitution – stating that unlike Anglo-Saxon constitutionalism, “our Constitution and Latin American constitutionalism adopt the doctrine of the ‘living’ Constitution” (page 32). See Section IV (page 30) about the legal basis for recognizing Rights of Nature.

The ruling was upheld in late 2024, despite opposition from the Ministry of Environment, the National Water Authority, and Petroperú, who hoped to overturn the initial decision,