The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Ecuadorian government to protect Indigenous groups from oil operations and to leave oil in the ground underneath their lands.

The court underscored that the rights of people living in voluntary isolation includes not just their physical territories but also their cultural identity, health, food security, housing and the overall environment necessary for their dignified life.

Multiple international treaties recognize the rights of people living in voluntary isolation to remain uncontacted.

The court suggested that to fully protect the rights of the Tagaeri, Taromenane and Dugakaeri, the government may need to expand a Delaware-sized area of rainforest and its 6-mile buffer zone that are supposed to be off-limits to extractive activity. The ruling noted that there have been multiple sightings of uncontacted groups traveling outside the designated off-limits area, known as the “Intangible Zone.”

In recent years, oil operations have expanded into the buffer area surrounding the Intangible Zone.

The Missionaries and the Oil Company

All Waorani people lived uncontacted in the Ecuadorian Amazon until the late 1950s, when American Christian missionaries began to force contact on Waorani groups to evangelize them. A few years later, the U.S. oil company Texaco worked with the missionaries to accelerate their forced contact campaign and remove Waorani people from their oil-rich lands. (...)