Obama urged to protect uncontacted tribes from oil pipeline
May 28, 2010
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President Obama has been urged to help protect Peru’s uncontacted tribes when he meets with Peruvian president Alan Garcia on 1 June.
Survival has written to President Obama highlighting the threat posed to two of the world’s last uncontacted tribes by the construction of an oil pipeline in the remote Peruvian Amazon.
ConocoPhillips and Spanish-Argentine oil giant Repsol-YPF stand to benefit if the pipeline is built. Both companies are hoping to explore for oil in the region where the tribes live and would need the pipeline, due to be built by Anglo-French company Perenco, to help transport any oil from the rainforest to Peru’s Pacific Coast.
‘We urge you to appeal to President Garcia to stop the construction of the pipeline and prohibit companies like ConocoPhillips from working in this area, and indeed any area where there are ‘uncontacted’ tribes,’ reads Survival’s letter to President Obama. ‘Working in such areas is a blatant violation of the tribes’ rights under international law and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and endangers the lives of some of the most vulnerable people on earth.’
The meeting between Presidents Garcia and Obama, scheduled to be in the White House, comes soon after statements from the US’s ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, that the US would review its position on the UN Declaration.
President Garcia has publicly called uncontacted tribes the ‘invention’ of environmentalists. Perenco, Repsol-YPF and ConocoPhillips spokespeople have all claimed the tribes don’t exist.
