HomeNewsBriefPeru Launches Dual Strategy to Tackle Illegal Mining Boom
BRIEF

Peru Launches Dual Strategy to Tackle Illegal Mining Boom

ILLEGAL MINING / 20 JAN 2017 BY JAMES BARGENT EN

Peru's government is targeting the illegal gold trade by declaring illegal mining an organized crime activity while launching a new formalization program for miners, in a carrot and stick strategy that history suggests will be difficult to implement.

Justice and Human Rights Minister Marisol Pérez Tello has told Peruvian press that illegal mining, along with related activities including the trafficking of equipment and substances used in mining and the financing of illegal mining, are to be incorporated into the country's Organized Crime Law, reported El Peruano.

The decision will mean authorities can now investigate a case while the accused is detained for up to 36 months and grants extra powers to investigators such as the use of undercover agents.

In addition, Energy and Mines Minister Gonzalo Tamayo announced the launch of a new plan for the formalization of miners.

The government's aim is to formalize half of the estimated 100,000-120,000 illegal miners in the country, reported El Comercio. The new plan will seek to simplify the procedures required to formalize and incentivize miners by offering credit and facilitating the granting of mining titles.

According to the minister, the government will differentiate between illegal miners and informal miners who can be brought into the legal economy by determining which operate in areas where mining is prohibited and which just lack proper authorization and permits.

InSight Crime Analysis

Disentangling informal and illegal mining is one of the greatest challenges governments such as Peru's face when it comes to tackling the illegal mining boom that has ravaged parts of Latin America in recent years.

Indiscriminate operations that criminalize all mining that is not legal puts the livelihoods of thousands of people and the economic future of mining territories at risk. However, the infiltration and co-optation of informal mining by criminal networks makes drawing a neat line between the criminal and the informal extremely difficult.

SEE ALSO: Coverage of Illegal Mining

Tackling the issue from both sides -- cracking down on the illegal while seeking to formalize the informal -- is a strategy countries impacted by illegal mining are now settling on as the best way to address this situation.

However, such attempts are not new for Peru, and their prior record is not good. The previous formalization campaign saw approximately 70,000 miners sign up to be integrated into the legal mining industry. However, several years later, only 161 mining operations representing approximately 3,000 people have completed the process, El Peruano cited Tamayo as saying.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BRAZIL / 6 OCT 2021

The scale of illegal mining on an Indigenous reserve deep in Brazil’s Amazon has grown so large that fleets of…

BOLIVIA / 30 NOV 2022

Lake Titicaca serves as a crossroads for varied criminal economies, from cocaine shipments to trafficking the frogs that live along…

BRAZIL / 28 DEC 2021

There was record destruction of the Amazon in 2020, as the rainforest lost an area around the size of Belize,…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela Coverage Continues to be Highlighted

3 MAR 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-director Jeremy McDermott was the featured guest on the Americas Quarterly podcast, where he provided an expert overview of the changing dynamics…

THE ORGANIZATION

Venezuela's Organized Crime Top 10 Attracts Attention

24 FEB 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published its ranking of Venezuela’s ten organized crime groups to accompany the launch of the Venezuela Organized Crime Observatory. Read…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime on El País Podcast

10 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime co-founder, Jeremy McDermott, was among experts featured in an El País podcast on the progress of Colombia’s nascent peace process.

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Interviewed by Associated Press

3 FEB 2023

This week, InSight Crime’s Co-director Jeremy McDermott was interviewed by the Associated Press on developments in Haiti as the country continues its prolonged collapse. McDermott’s words were republished around the world,…

THE ORGANIZATION

Escaping Barrio 18

27 JAN 2023

Last week, InSight Crime published an investigation charting the story of Desafío, a 28-year-old Barrio 18 gang member who is desperate to escape gang life. But there’s one problem: he’s…