IACHR warns about contact with isolated indigenous communities

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) yesterday, July 29, warned about the threats that persist againstindigenous communities living in isolated remote areas of South America and asked not to contact them.

The incursions into indigenous territories “occur mostly in the context of natural resource extraction,” the Commission said in a report.

According to the IACHR, extraction activities “represent maybe the greatest threat to the full enjoyment of human rights” of those peoples who live in voluntary isolation or with sporadic contact with the outside world.

The report includes cases of wood cutting in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, extraction of hydrocarbons in Bolivia, illegal mining in Venezuela or ranching and soybean farming in Paraguay.