APA..Newsletter # 3
International News..Peru Debates Law on Indigenous Peoples’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPS, Lima, Jan 12, 2000)

The Peruvian government is drafting a law to protect indigenous rights over their ancestral knowledge in an attempt to prevent the history of plundering native wealth from repeating itself, as well as controlling the international exploitation of Peru's native plants. Indigenous communities will be the intellectual owners of genetic resources coming from plant species whose curative or nutritional values form part of their ancestral knowledge, according to the text of the legal bill. ''Peru is one of the countries with greatest biodiversity in the world and must begin utilising the competitive advantage this implies,'' commented Jorge Caillaux, president of the Peruvian Environmental Law Society, ''but it must protect its natural resources as well as the rights of Indigenous peoples.''

Among those participating in drafting the legal bill are representatives from indigenous communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and officials from the ministries of Health, Industry, Agriculture and from the National Institute in Defence of Intellectual Property (Indecopi). ''For the first time in the world, a government is proposing to establish protection for the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples, a system to regulate research, production and marketing of genetic resources,'' said Beatriz Boza, of Indecopi.

The bill establishes regulations for access to genetic resources. If passed, it will make Peru the third nation in the world to possess such legislation, after the Philippines and Bolivia. But unlike the Bolivian and Philippine laws on access to genetic resources, the Peruvian bill recognises native communities' ownership of the knowledge they and their ancestors have developed.

Shell Mound, Waramuri Regio 1