The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) has ruled the Ecuadorian government responsible for human rights violations experienced by two of the country’s last Indigenous groups known to be living in deliberate isolation from the outside world.

The decision, made public on March 13, focused on the Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. But according to experts, it could bolster the case for legal protections of Indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation elsewhere in Latin America, including the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon and the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.

It could also provide legal support for litigation and policy aimed at ensuring protection of lands and ecosystems crucial to these Indigenous people’s survival.

Citing violence that has claimed the lives of the Tagaeri and Taromenane in recent decades as oil production and other extractive activity in the Ecuadorian Amazon has increased, the court ordered Ecuador to continue investigation of two such incidents. It also requires that in weighing licensing requests for oil drilling and other extractive projects, the government must take possible effects on isolated Indigenous peoples into account in assessing potential impacts.

The nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenane live in a remote region of the eastern Ecuadorian Amazon that includes highly biodiverse Yasuní National Park but has also attracted oil development. They are related to the Waorani, an Indigenous people whose members began coming out of isolation in the 1950s. The Tagaeri and Taromenane did not follow suit, avoiding contact with larger Ecuadorian society and inhabiting the most remote area of the country’s Amazon rainforest region.

Their safety, however, has come under threat in recent decades as oil development and illegal logging operations have pushed deeper into the Ecuadorian Amazon. Experts say this extractive activity has directly and indirectly spurred violent encounters with Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation.

In 2003, a group of Taromenane were killed by Indigenous Waorani who were reportedly incited by illegal loggers. Another clash in 2006 caused multiple fatalities, though the circumstances are unclear. In 2013, Waorani reportedly killed more than two dozen Taromenane and kidnapped two young girls in the group—sisters aged 3 and 6—in apparent reprisal for the earlier spearing deaths of two elderly Waorani by Taromenane.

Investigation ordered

In its ruling, the Inter-American court ordered Ecuador’s government to continue probing the 2003 and 2006 incidents. It also held the Ecuadorian state responsible for the rights violations experienced by the two girls kidnapped in the 2013 attack, ordering steps be taken to provide redress.

The girls, who were separated and brought up in different Waorani communities, have asked to maintain their privacy. The court, finding that the sisters’ ordeal left severe psychological scars, ordered the government to give the girls free psychological or psychiatric services if they wish to have it, fully covering medication, transportation and other expenses.

The sentence also requires Ecuador to enforce the terms of a public referendum passed in 2023 to halt oil operations in Block 43, an oil-concession area in the region, and the removal of all infrastructure with oil-development there.

The order specifically refers to a buffer zone that rings a large protected area near Block 43 that was created in 1999 to safeguard the Tagaeri and Taromenani. The protected area, called the Tagaeri-Taromenani Intangible Zone, or ZITT, according to its Spanish acronym, covers 819,000 hectares (2.02 million acres). All extractive activities are prohibited within the area, which was demarcated in 2007. The rights-court ruling requires oil infrastructure remaining in the ZITT buffer zone to be removed “as long as this removal does not negatively impact the environment.”

It also requires the creation of a technical body to report every two years on sightings of people living in voluntary isolation, leaving open the possibility of expanding the ZITT or its buffer area, if warranted.

Advocates for Indigenous communities welcome the court’s recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. They also applaud the court’s call for monitoring and enforcement of the ZITT so it remains free of extractive activity and fully available to the tribes.

Some hoped for stronger ruling

Yet some say they had hoped the ruling would go farther than it did. David Suárez, an Ecuadorian expert on people living in voluntary isolation, told EcoAméricas he wished the court had established a strong precedent regarding permanent and formal territorial rights of peoples living in voluntary isolation.

“This isn’t about an environmental issue or a pro- or anti-oil position,” Suárez says. “It’s about the life of the [Indigenous people living in voluntary isolation] and that they not be subject to forced contact [with the outside world], so they can live in a way they freely determine.”

Suárez expressed disappointment as well that the court left Ecuador some leeway in determining the nature and timing of protection measures. This, he argues, could allow politics to influence compliance.

Indigenous-rights advocates also had hoped the court would order expansion of the ZITT or its 10-kilometer- (six-mile-) wide buffer zone, rather than leave the matter to study. Suárez says the reason this did not occur is likely because the case focused more on impacts related to the Block 43 oil-concession area and comparatively less on the tribes’ movements in the region. Says Suárez: “Material compiled in the last 20 years shows that the Tagaeri and Taromenane range beyond the [ZITT].”

For his part, Penti Baihua, a Waorani community leader, said implementation of the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling must also take into account the need to protect Waorani communities on lands frequented by the Tagaeri and Taromenane.

“In applying the decisions of the court, it is important that the government listen to the communities that live near them,” Baihua says. “I’m not referring to the entire Waorani community, but instead to those who are their neighbors ... so there is efficient and respectful protection of the rights of all.”