For five days, experts and authorities from Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Peru will be exchanging their experiences during an international seminar on prison health, which gets under way today, 11 September, in Lima, Peru. It will deal with various problems concerning health in the prison environment.

Evita Orihuela just couldn’t stop asking how much longer it would be before she got to Cochahuasi, the hamlet two hours south of Lima where her brother Salvador lives. After an eight-hour journey from Huancayo to the capital, she was about to see him for the first time in 23 years.

The ICRC awarded its Press Prize at the 44th Monte Carlo Television Festival on 3 July to director Daniel Pera, journalist Andrés Luque and cameraman Jesús Mata of the Spanish television network TVE for their documentary entitled Perú, la verdad sobre el espanto (Peru: the truth about the horror).

The ICRC had to use its own vehicles to transport nine casualties during recent incidents in Huamanga, capital of Ayacucho department. The ICRC later accompanied a team of Peruvian Red Cross volunteers as they assessed the situation in the city’s hospitals.

A second campaign on the dangers of anti-personnel landmines, organized by the Peruvian Mine Action Centre (CONTRAMINAS) with the support of the ICRC and the Organization of American States (OAS), came to an end this week in the department of Junín (central Sierra), Peru.

A regional conference on persons reported missing in connection with situations of armed conflict or internal violence is under way in Lima, where it opened on 28 May.

Since the beginning of the second university term, nine professors from the humanitarian law interest group set up by the ICRC delegation in May 2002 have been reserving time in their courses for international humanitarian law.

In late September the ICRC conducted a major campaign in cooperation with the Peruvian national police to raise awareness of the dangers of antipersonnel mines in 14 villages particularly affected by the problem. (includes pictures)

On 6 May the ICRC and the Peruvian National Police, in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, launched the 2nd course on human rights and humanitarian principles for police instructors.