Peru is the world’s second-largest cocaine producer after Colombia. While the Shining Path guerrillas used drug proceeds to fortify their battle against the state, the group has grown weaker in recent years. Today, Peru’s criminal landscape features localized groups that maintain sophisticated cocaine trafficking networks to Europe, Asia and the United States. Domestic traffickers share territory with foreign drug trafficking organizations from Colombia and Mexico, and also have ties to transnational groups in Brazil and Italy.
Latest News
State Resilience: Little Political Will for Protecting Peru's Amazon
While there are some efforts to build resilience, including the passing of new legislative frameworks and some other signs of political willingness to tackle the problem, there is still a…
Corruption at Every Level: Who Profits from Destruction of Peru's Amazon
From unchecked agricultural development to wildlife trafficking, corruption greases the wheels of every environmental crime in the Peruvian Amazon.
Poaching Grounds: Wildlife Trafficking in Peru's Amazon
Peru – rich in biodiversity – is a hotspot for the wildlife trade. Reptiles, fish and birds are all trafficked locally and internationally.
Peru Profile
Violence in Peru has been relatively low since the end of its civil conflict in the late 1990s. Although it remains the world’s top coca producer behind Colombia, illicit cultivations in the country are decreasing. Profits from drug trafficking and illegal logging have fueled a small resurgence of the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group that no longer poses a major threat to the stability of the Peruvian state, but which continues to attack security forces and foreign companies in the remote Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro River Valley (VRAEM).
PERU PROFILEInvestigations
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Illegal gold mining drives the destruction of Peru's Amazon, where fortune seekers strip forests and leave behind poisonous pools of mercury.
Rich in resources, Peru's Amazon is being plundered at an accelerated rate, losing more than 26,000 square kilometers of forest since 2001.
Peru’s Amazon, which covers nearly half of the Andean country, is rich in biodiversity and critical to the capture of carbon, which mitigates global warming. Political instability and corruption, however,…
Cocaine processing has taken root on European soil, Mexican and Dutch synthetic drug traffickers have partnered up, and a new chemical technique is encouraging the establishment of super-labs in Europe’s…
A government proposal for Peru to purchase all the country’s coca production has generated fierce debate, but experts question whether it is even feasible.
Authorities have extended a state of emergency in Peru’s illegal coal mining heartland, already mired in criminality, following a sharp rise in killings as gangs battle for control of lucrative…

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