By Katie Surma / Inside Climate News
Residents of La Oroya, Peru, known as one of the most polluted cities on Earth, have won a landmark victory from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ruled last week that Peru was responsible for the physical and mental harm that a metallurgical facility’s pollution inflicted on 80 people.
Among the victims were two individuals whose deaths the court determined were caused by pollution from the La Oroya Metallurgical Complex, a century-old smelting and refining plant located in Peru’s Central Sierra region, about 50 miles northeast of Lima.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in Costa Rica, ordered the government of Peru to provide free medical care to the victims and to compensate each individual upwards of $30,000 each, which includes medical costs and amounts for pain and suffering, depending on each person’s specific circumstances. Representatives of the deceased victims will receive $65,000 each.
Victims had documented respiratory, heart, skin and other diseases but lacked access to adequate medical care despite the federal government knowing of the links between the metallurgical complex’s pollution and the illnesses. The air, water and soil in La Oroya, a town of about 33,000 people, was so contaminated that one expert witness had referred to the area as a “sacrifice zone.”
Peru must also take steps to hold those responsible for the harm accountable, assess and remediate the environmental damage caused by the La Oroya Metallurgical Complex’s century of operations, publicly acknowledge the government’s malfeasance and install air, water and soil monitoring devices, among other remedies ordered by the court.
Victims reported receiving threats and facing harassment and reprisals from workers and others who defended the complex’s operations, but the government was not responsive, the court found. Victims were photographed, their homes were marked and they were told their homes would be burned down and they would be thrown into the Mantaro River, among other threats.
“States have the duty to prevent human rights violations produced by public and private companies,” the court wrote in its 144-page opinion, which found that Peru had violated residents’ right to a healthy environment and other rights.
Opened in 1922, the La Oroya Metallurgical Complex was first operated by the American company Cerro de Pasco Cooper, whose founders included industrial tycoons J. P. Morgan and Henry Clay Frick. The complex specializes in the smelting and refining of metals, which have high contents of lead and other heavy metals. The complex was nationalized for a period of about 23 years ending in 1997, when it was privatized and sold to a Peruvian subsidiary of the American-owned Renco Group. In 2009, operations at the complex were suspended due to environmental issues and debt. The complex partially reopened last year after ownership was transferred to a firm partially owned by the complex’s workers.
Since 1970, various studies have found high amounts of pollutants hazardous to human health in the air, water and soil of La Oroya which exceed national and international guidelines and standards for what is considered to be safe for human health. Those substances include arsenic, cadmium and sulfur dioxide. In 1999, tests carried out by the Peruvian General Directorate for Environmental Health (DIGESA) found that locals’ blood had three times the limit of lead established by the World Health Organization. Today, the WHO acknowledges that there is no safe level of lead exposure, which even at very low amounts can significantly affect childrens’ mental and physical development, and in some cases is fatal.
Last week’s ruling was the latest development in a more than 20-year legal battle mounted by the residents of La Oroya, who in 2002 filed a lawsuit in Peruvian courts against their government. Though Peru’s Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that the government needed to adopt various health and safety measures, officials failed to comply with that court decision and the dispute ultimately ended up before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
“Twenty years ago, when this fight started, I was carrying my banner saying that the health of the children is worth more than gold,” Don Pablo, a resident of La Oroya, said in a written statement. “We never gave up, and now I am very happy with the Court’s decision.”
Rights advocates say the ruling, which found Peru exercised inadequate control over corporate pollution, sets an important precedent for thousands of communities around the world that are impacted by extreme amounts of industrial air, water and soil contamination.
David Boyd, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, hailed the ruling as one of the strongest court decisions ever made in an environmental case and said the judgment is a watershed moment for the enforcement of the human right to a healthy environment, now recognized by 161 nations.
“Not only does [the judgment] provide long overdue environmental justice for the people of La Oroya in Peru, it also establishes a vital precedent that will be used by concerned citizens, communities, courts, and environmental human rights defenders all over the world,” Boyd said.
Neither the Renco Group nor the Peruvian embassy responded to requests for comment.
Peru is one of 20 countries that has accepted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ “contentious” jurisdiction, meaning the court has authority to determine whether those nations have violated rights recognized by the American Convention on Human Rights and other human rights treaties.
Peru must, within a year, report to the court on its compliance with last week’s judgment. If Peru fails to comply, the court can notify the General Assembly of the Organization of American States. While the Inter-American court lacks the authority to force compliance with its rulings, the OAS can exert political pressure on Peru to comply.
The case of Inhabitants of La Oroya v. Peru was the first ever “contentious” case before the Inter-American Court involving toxic pollution and followed a 2017 landmark advisory opinion from the court on human rights and the environment. That nonbinding ruling laid out the obligations governments have to prevent serious environmental harm within and outside their borders, including ensuring that people have the right to clean air, water, and a livable climate, as well as access to justice and environmental information.
Last week’s ruling affirmed aspects of the 2017 advisory opinion, including that a livable climate is part of the human right to a healthy environment.
“It is difficult to imagine international obligations with greater significance than those that protect the environment against illicit or arbitrary conduct that causes serious, extensive, long-lasting and irreversible damage to the environment in a climate crisis scenario that threatens the survival of species,” the court wrote in last week’s opinion.
Taken together, Inhabitants of La Oroya v. Peru and the 2017 advisory opinion could encourage activists to push governments and companies to meet their commitments under environmental treaties. Litigants from the Netherlands, Montana and Australia, among other places, have already won climate change-related victories in local courts based on claims rooted in human rights law. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will hold hearings in Barbados and Brazil in April and May on a forthcoming advisory opinion on governments’ obligations for responding to climate change under various human rights’ laws. Boyd said he expects more climate change litigation based on the human right to a healthy environment to follow.
“The effectiveness of international climate agreements has been undermined by a lack of strong enforcement mechanisms, but human rights law can overcome that weakness,” he said.
Separate from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights litigation, the Renco Group has filed a lawsuit against the Peruvian government based on alleged violations of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, which provides foreign investors with certain economic rights, such as the right to “fair and equitable treatment” by the host government.
The case is the second so-called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, lawsuit that Renco has filed against Peru related to the 2009 closure of the La Oroya complex, after the first case was dismissed on procedural grounds. In the second case, filed in 2019, Renco alleges, in part, that Peru expropriated the company’s investment and violated the fair and equitable treatment standard of its free trade agreement with Peru by imposing additional environmental requirements on the company while refusing to give the company the time it needed to fulfill those obligations. Renco also alleged that the brunt of contamination from the La Oroya complex occurred prior to its ownership in 1997.
Renco did not list a specified amount of damages, but in similar cases, companies that prevail on their claims have won awards against governments worth tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, or more.
By Zehra Imam / Mondoweiss
As Palestinians are slaughtered by the thousands in Gaza and violently attacked during night prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque by Israel, the West Bank endures massacres that at times go unnoticed during this holy month. I have spent my Ramadan in conversation with a friend from Jenin.
Much has changed since I visited Aseel (not her real name) in August 2023. There are things I saw in Jenin that no longer exist. One of them is my friend’s smile and her spark.
Usually, they say Jenin is a small Gaza. During Ramadan, because the attacks generally happen at night, people are an easy target because they are on the streets late at night. In the past, it was rare for the IOF to enter during the day. Now, they attack during the day; their special forces enter, and after people discover them, their soldiers come within minutes.
Every 2-3 days, there is a new attack in Jenin. In our minds, there is a constant ringing that the IOF may come. We don’t know at what time we will be targeted or when they will enter. There is no stability in our lives.
Even when we plan for something, we hedge it with our inshallahs and laugh. There are a lot of ifs. If they don’t enter the camp. If there are no martyrs. If there is no strike.
On the second day of Ramadan, they attacked my neighborhood again. We thought it was a bombing because it started with an explosion, but the house was shaking. We were praying fajr, and everyone was screaming outside. The sound of the drone was in our ears. “No, these are missiles,” we realized.
There was panic in the streets. Women fainted. People had been walking back from praying at the mosque, and some were still in the street. Alhamdulillah, no one was hurt, we say.
The balcony to the room at my uncle’s house where we slept had fallen. It no longer had any glass, and a bullet entered my uncle’s bedroom and reached the kitchen. The drone hit the trees in front of our house. The missiles destroyed the ceiling, and the rockets reached my neighbor’s house on the first floor, exactly in front of our house.
Since October 7, Jenin has become a target. There is a clear escalation in the camp and the city. The IOF has used many different weapons to kill us here. They have even been aggressive toward the infrastructure, as though every inch of our city was resisting them.
They destroyed much of the camp, and there is no entrance now. The arch is gone, and there is no sign reminding us that Jenin refugee camp is a temporary place. There is no horse. Only the street is left. You have the photographs. You were lucky. They changed the shape of the camp, and everything has been destroyed.”Aseel
The first time Aseel and I met in person was in Nablus at the Martyrs Roundabout. As we caught up, we ate a delicious concoction of ice cream, milk, nuts, and fresh fruit that was a perfect balm to the heat. She took me to some of her favorite places nestled within the old city of Nablus. A 150-year-old barber’s shop that felt like you had entered an antique store where plants reached the ceiling and where the barber was a massive fan of Angelina Jolie. A centuries-old house now called Tree House Cafe looked like a hobbit home from Lord of the Rings, where we hid away as she sipped her coffee and I drank a mint lemonade. We visited one of the oldest soap factories in the world with ingredients such as goat’s milk and olive oil, jasmine and pomegranates, even dates and Dead Sea mud.
We happened to chance upon a Sufi zawiya as we walked through a beautiful archway decorated with lanterns, light bulbs, and an assortment of potted plants, after which we saw a cobalt blue door on our left and an azul blue door with symmetrical red designs, and Quranic ayat like incantations on our right as doors upon doors greeted us.
The air was welcoming yet mingled with the memory of martyrs whose memorials took over the landscape, sometimes in the form of larger-than-life portraits surrounded by complex four-leafed magenta-white flowers; posters above a water spout next to a heart-shaped leaf; a melted motorcycle that, too, was targeted in the neighborhood that hosted the Lions’ Den. We stopped to pray at a masjid, quiet and carpeted.
After a bus ride from Nablus to Jenin, on our walk before entering Jenin camp, Aseel showed me the hospital right outside the camp. She pointed out the barricades created to keep the occupation forces from entering specific streets. This is the same hospital that the occupation forces blocked during the July 2023 attack, which now seems like a lifetime ago.
What caught my eyes again and again were the two Keys of Return on top of the entrance of Jenin Camp that symbolized so much for Palestinians.
“This is a temporary station,” Aseel read out loud to me. “That’s what it says. We are supposed to return to our homes.”
“Netanyahu said he is planning another big attack, so the resistance fighters are preparing because it can happen any day,” she had told me that evening as we shared Jenin-style knafeh, baked to perfection. Then she stopped, looked at the sky, and said humorously, “Ya Allah, hopefully not today!” And we both laughed because of its potential reality.
Dinner on the terrace at her uncle’s home was a delicious spread of hummus, laban, fries, cucumbers pickled by her aunt, and arayes — fried bread stuffed with meat. Then we moved the furniture to sleep on mattresses in a room that extended to the rooftop terrace with a breeze, overlooking Jenin Camp and the rest of Jenin City. We could hear gunshots in the distance. The drones were commonplace, and the heat did not relent. Temperatures soared, and the electricity was out when we woke up at 5 a.m. I heard her pray, and later, as we sipped on coffee and had wafters in the early morning at her home, my eyes went to a piece of tatreez, or embroidery, of a bird in flight framed on the wall. Her eyes followed mine and when I said I loved it.
“It used to be my grandfather’s,” she told me. “Of course it’s beautiful — the bird is free.”
Unexpectedly, Aseel’s mother gifted me a Sprite bottle full of olive oil beholding the sweet hues of its intact health, which I would later ship secretly from Bethlehem all the way to Boston. And then Aseel came to me with a gift, too: a necklace that spoke succinctly about the right to return and live on this earth. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was held together with intricate calligraphy carved in the shape of Palestine’s landscape, and I was completely overwhelmed.
“You are in Palestine, my dear,” she had smiled. “And you are now my family. This is your country, this is your second home, really.”
When I ask her about what brings her hope these days, Aseel tells me about her eight-year-old nephew.
He wanted to eat two meals. I told him that in Gaza they don’t have food. He was complaining about the food, and I told him, they don’t have water. And he heard me because he said, “today, we will only have one meal.”
I’m amazed at how mature he is. He even said, “We won’t make a special cake on Eid because of the Gazans.” For me, this is a lesson to be learned. He is only eight years old, but he knows.
We have lost a lot of people in Gaza, but here in the West Bank, we are succeeding because our new generation knows a lot. Ben Gurion would not be happy. He said of Palestinians, “the old will die and the young will forget.” No, the young ask even more questions. The new generation brings us hope. Hope is the new generation.
/sp
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Katie Surma
Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jim Crowell.