U.S. Embassy in Peru

United States Signs Action Plan Implementing the MOU on Cooperation Related to Small Scale Gold Mining

The United States of America and the Republic of Peru signed the 2023-2024 action plan of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation Related to Small-Scale Gold Mining.  Both countries originally signed the MOU in 2017, and renewed its implementing action plans yearly until 2020.  This signing marks the reinitialization of signed action plan commitments, though both countries continued to work together on the pillars of the MOU throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as conditions permitted.

The objective of the MOU is to strengthen partnership and collaboration on activities to promote the formalization of small-scale mining, with an emphasis on gold mining, as well as to fight against illegal gold mining and related crimes.

The MOU identifies five main pillars:

1. To protect human health and the environment by reducing or eliminating the use and release of mercury from small-scale mining;
2. To strengthen and increase transparency in the gold supply and commercialization chain;
3. To promote alternative economic development in areas where mining is prohibited;
4. To effectively prevent, investigate, and prosecute crimes associated with illegal gold mining and related trade; and
5. To prevent and stop encroachment of illegal mining on natural protected areas, indigenous peoples, archaeological zones that make up the nation’s cultural patrimony, among other prohibited areas.

The new action plan will guide and promote activities between August 2023 and December 2024.