Written by Contributor: Jon Stroshine
You might not think of Peru as a nation facing a human rights crisis. But statistics don’t lie.
Eighty-one percent of Peruvians believe that “discrimination happens all the time and no one does anything,” according to a Peruvian Justice Ministry survey released earlier this week. Just over thirty-five percent of Peruvians feel they have been discriminated against at some time, according to the survey.
The survey also measured the attitude of Peruvians toward gay rights, 40 percent of Peruvians said they were against gay civil unions. Slightly more than 76 percent said they would not change how they treated their child if they came out as gay, this according to Peruvian newspaper Publimetro.
Another statistic noted that almost 40 percent of Peruvians believe that the rights of the elderly are not respected.
Just under 52 percent of Peruvians polled said that economic status is the most common reason for discrimination, followed by birthplace (27.5 percent) and race (24.5 percent), according to Publimetro. 28.8 percent of respondents said that the violation of human rights is justified in some cases, while 65.8 percent said it was not, with 5.4 percent abstaining.