Peru - July 2024

Congress has passed a bill, through which a statute of limitations will be set to crimes against humanity and war crimes committed before 1 July 2002 (date in which the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court entered into force). Lawmakers pushed the piece of legislation through despite provisional measures by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordering the Peruvian state to halt it. A group of UN Special Rapporteurs and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances had also cautioned that establishing a statute of limitations to such atrocity crimes constitutes a transgression to a peremptory norm of international law. Human rights experts have further highlighted that the bill severely undermines access to justice efforts for victims of the internal armed conflict that took place in the country between 1980 and 2000.

Sources: Radio Nacional Peru, Centro para la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional, BBC, El País (1), El País (2), OHCHR