Peru Conflict Profile

Between 1980 and 1992, Peru confronted the Shining Path ("Sendero Luminoso" in Spanish), a Maoist insurgency. The conflict left an estimated seventy thousand dead and threatened to topple the state. In 2001, Peru convened a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comision de la Verdad y Reconciliacion, or CVR) to investigate and document the conflict. The final CVR report, released in 2003, determined that widespread human rights abuses--including torture, kidnappings, and assassinations--had been perpetrated by the Shining Path and by the Peruvian state. The report attributed 54 percent of the casualties to the Shining Path, and most of the rest to the state. (About 1.5 percent of the casualties were attributed to a second, relatively minor insurgent movement, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.)