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UNCLAS LIMA 003074 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL EAID PE
SUBJECT: CONSTITUTIONAL TRIBUNAL RULES PARTS OF NGO LAW 
UNCONSTITUTIONAL 
 
REF: A. LIMA 244 
 
     ¶B. LIMA 913 
 
Sensitive But Unclassified. Please handle accordingly. 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary: Peru's Constitutional Tribunal ruled on 
September 6 that parts of the NGO law were unconstitutional, 
specifically, articles one and nine, which had established 
tighter controls over private funding of NGOs and had 
established stiff penalties for NGOs violating the 
regulations.  The decision came after a week of public 
statements by congressional leaders declaring the law both 
constitutional and necessary; NGOs have kept a low profile in 
the debate but are privately pleased the court struck down 
parts of the bill they saw as clearly unconstitutional. 
Still, the controversy and tensions between elements of the 
ruling party and the NGO community remain, and both sides 
expect that public skirmishing over the role of civil society 
in the political process will continue.    End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) On September 6, Peru's Constitutional Tribunal 
issued a 55-page ruling declaring parts of Law 28925 
unconstitutional.  The law was passed in December 2006 and 
was designed to increase governmental oversight over NGOs. 
In particular, the court took issue with language in Article 
1 which allowed the government to regulate NGOs financed 
entirely by private funds.  The court agreed with the appeal 
filed by a consortium of NGOs that such supervision 
represented an unconstitutional infringement on private 
contracts.  The court also rejected administrative sanctions 
established in Article 9 which gave the government the right 
to dissolve NGOs and to ban NGO personnel from future 
involvement in international assistance.  Although the bulk 
of the law remained unchanged, NGOs considered these two 
points the most important parts of the law (see reftels). 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Some congressional leaders had used the run-up to 
the decision to defend the law.  The president of the 
congress, Luis Gonzales Posada of the ruling APRA party, said 
the language of the law was clear and reflected a legitimate 
need to regulate NGO activity.  The secretary general of 
APRA, Maurcio Mulder, said regulation of social organizations 
was a basic obligation of the state and suggested that some 
NGOs had allowed themselves to be used as terrorist fronts in 
the past.  After the September 6 decision, both Mulder and 
Gonzales said the high court had not challenged the right of 
the government to regulate NGOs and had left the bulk of the 
law untouched.  Both suggested that the congress would pass 
additional legislation to meet the objections of the 
Constitutional Tribunal. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Leading NGOs offered little public reaction but 
privately expressed satisfaction at a decision most 
considered inevitable.  Hans Landolt of the NGO Institute for 
Legal Defense told poloff that Articles 1 and 9 were simply 
too vague and confusing to be implemented.  Landolt called 
the entire debate over the law pointless: significant 
regulations already existed, he said, to control NGO 
activity, and NGOs have never questioned the right of the 
government to know how public funds are spent, only the 
state's right to intervene in a agreement signed between 
private parties.  For Landolt, the Congress's insistence on 
legislating against NGOs in the absence of a compelling need 
suggests the congressional leadership does not understand the 
positive role NGOs can play in promoting social development. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Pablo Rojas, secretary general of the National 
Committee on Human Rights --  an NGO umbrella organization -- 
told Poloff the controversy over the law reflects deep 
skepticism among the APRA leadership about the role of NGOs 
in a representative democracy.  According to Rojas, the 
suspicion dates to the fall of ex-president Fujimori, when 
the APRA party saw firsthand the power of Peruvian NGOs to 
effect political change.  Rojas says leaders like Mulder and 
Gonzales question the legitimacy of social organizations that 
are neither democratically elected nor accountable to a 
political constituency. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Comment: Ombudsmen Beatriz Moreno told the 
Ambassador September 5 that the most striking feature of the 
NGO debate is the unwillingness of both sides to talk. 
Moreno said the law was passed with little public debate, and 
NGOs immediately went to court to challenge its 
constitutionality rather than meet with Congressional leaders 
to resolve differences.  The lingering animosity between the 
two sides resurfaced after the August 15 earthquake in Peru, 
when some NGOs charged the central government with purposely 
hindering private relief efforts, a charge the administration 
flatly denied.  Peru's sustained economic growth is giving 
the central government unprecedented resources to address 
widespread poverty and inevitably is changing the 
relationship between the GOP and the NGO community.  Neither 
side has handled the evolving relationship well, and in the 
words of Rojas, "If a major disaster cannot bring us 
together, nothing else will."  End Comment 
NEALON