Andean Group - February 2026

The Peruvian general elections on 12 April will take place against a backdrop of rising violence in which criminal groups are growing visibly more powerful. A tough-on-crime stance is shared by the majority of candidates across different ideologies, as proposals gain traction that were formerly seen as radical, such as restoring the death penalty and placing the military in charge of domestic security. There are also growing concerns about the threat posed by organised crime groups to candidates, two of whom were attacked in the final weeks of 2025.

Rafael Belaúnde Llosa, the presidential candidate for the centre-right Libertad Popular (LP), escaped with light injuries after his car was struck by three bullets in Cañete province, south of the capital Lima, on 2 December. In a social media post he shared a photograph of himself with streaks of blood on his face and shirt, and of three bullet holes in the car’s windscreen. The commander of the national police, General Óscar Arriola, said later that the attack was carried out by two assailants on a motorbike, who Belaúnde repelled using his own firearm, and said that the candidate’s injuries were caused by broken glass.

Belaúnde dismissed the possibility that he had been targeted for assassination due to his political aspirations, claiming the day after the attack that that he did not think it had “anything to do with politics” and was merely “an example of the citizen insecurity suffered by thousands of Peruvians every day”. He added that “the surge in insecurity in Peru is in itself an attack on democracy”. There are reasons to believe that the attack was targeted, however, based on the account given by Arriola. The police commander said that Belaúnde, a former energy and mining minister (2020) and the grandson of former president Fernando Belaúnde (1963-1968, 1980-1985), had been regularly driving the same route up to three times a week. Arriola said that the attackers opened fire as they approached Belaúnde, rather than attempting to stop his car and carry out a robbery.

The attack against Belaúnde came days after another attack, this one fatal, against an aspiring candidate. Percy Ipanaqué Navarro, a lawyer who was seeking a congressional seat for the centre-left Juntos por el Perú (JPP), was shot seven times on 28 November while driving in Piura, the capital of the eponymous northwestern region. The Peruvian press has reported that there are two main theories about the motives for Ipanaqué’s murder. The first of these relates to his past work as a lawyer defending suspects in organised crime trials. The other concerns his recent denunciations of alleged links between the police and criminal groups, and his calls for a tougher crackdown on crimes such as extortion and contract killings.

Concern about the way organised crime might shape the elections has been building for months. In April 2025, the president of the national electoral council (JNE), Roberto Burneo, warned that the number of threats was expected to triple as compared to the previous electoral cycle in 2021, when 416 risks were identified, of which 29 were violent.

Speaking at the same event as Burneo, Nicolás Zevallos, director of public affairs at local think tank Instituto de Criminología, warned of the risk of election campaigns being infiltrated by organised crime groups. “What illegal economies seek in the political arena is basically the possibility to reduce the capacity for control, vigilance, and regulation of their activities,” Zevallos said, noting that this was a particular risk in the regional and municipal elections that will be held in October this year.

An Ipsos poll published on 2 October showed widespread public concern that the elections are vulnerable to criminal interference. The poll found that 78% of respondents thought it likely that criminal groups would use money to try to influence the elections in their favour. A further 67% thought it likely that there would be acts of violence or intimidation against candidates similar to those seen in Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico. The same poll revealed that there was little hope among respondents that crime would be reduced as a result of the elections, with 54% predicting that criminal influence over legislation would continue to grow during the next congress, and only 11% expecting strong progress against crime under the next government.

This lack of faith comes despite increasingly hardline proposals from many candidates. As of late January, the presidential polls were being led by the far-right Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular, RP), the right-wing Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular, FP), and the centre-left Mario Vizcarra (Perú Primero, PP) – although Vizcarra, the brother of imprisoned former president Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020), is facing an uphill battle to compete as he appeals a suspension imposed in relation to a corruption sentence he received in 2005. Support was soft for all three leading candidates, however, with a huge 47% of respondents in a 16 January Ipsos poll saying they would cast blank or spoiled ballots, or would not say who they were planning to vote for.

Amid immense dissatisfaction with the political establishment, fuelled in part by its inability to get a grip on crime but also due to frustrations about corruption and the economy, there is a strong chance of an outsider candidate breaking through. Eye-catching proposals on security seem to be the preferred method for candidates to draw attention to themselves in a crowded field of 36 contenders.

National daily Gestión assessed the extent of support for hardline security positions among candidates in a 15 January article. It found that eight candidates had pledged in their manifestoes to put the military in charge of internal security. A further four had promised to restore the death penalty, which has not been used since 1979 (at least two other candidates, Aliaga and the comedian Carlos Álvarez, have also supported reviving capital punishment but did not include it in their manifestoes). Various candidates have proposed building mega-prisons in the style of the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot) in El Salvador, including Fujimori, who has pledged to build four such prisons and to place them under the control of the armed forces.

Withdrawing from the regional human rights court?

Various candidates have proposed withdrawing from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This has been a growing demand on the Peruvian right over the past year and has also found some support on the left. Former president Dina Boluarte (2023-2025) supported leaving the court’s jurisdiction and disregarded several of its rulings [SSR-25-09]. FP has repeatedly chafed at the court’s interventions, particularly those relating to the incarceration of Keiko Fujimori’s late father, authoritarian former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who was released from prison in 2023 despite the IACtHR ruling that he must continue to serve his 25-year sentence for human rights abuses and corruption.

      Another reason to withdraw from the IACtHR, in the view of several candidates, is the restriction on capital punishment in the Pact of San José, which underpins the wider regional human rights system. If Peru were to withdraw on these grounds it would follow in the footsteps of Trinidad & Tobago, which pulled out of the Pact of San José in 1998, largely due to the restrictions it imposes on the death penalty.

      Candidates who have used the capital punishment argument to justify their call to leave the IACtHR include José Williams (Avanza País, AvP), Paul Jaimes (Progresemos), Francisco Díaz Canseco (Perú Acción, PA), and Charlie Carrasco (Perú Unido, PU).

Record homicides

Peru registered a record 2,213 homicides in 2025, according to figures from the national deaths registry (Sinadef) that were cited by national daily La República on 30 December. This was up from 2,083 in 2024 and equated to an average of 6.07 murders per day. Whilst the jump of 130 homicides in 2025 versus 2024 was noticeable, a larger surge in murders took place from 2023-2024, when the number of murders increased by 572, having stood at 1,511 in 2023. Public concern about crime began growing significantly in 2024 amid a rise in extortion and was declared a key priority by the Boluarte administration, which repeatedly declared states of emergency which had no clear impact on crime trends.

‘El Monstruo’ extradited from Paraguay

One of Peru’s most-wanted criminals, Erick ‘El Monstruo’ Moreno, was extradited from Paraguay to Peru on 28 January to serve a 32-year prison sentence for murder, contract killings, drug trafficking, and robbery. He was sentenced in absentia in 2023 and was arrested on 24 September last year in the San Lorenzo district of Paraguay’s capital Asunción. Moreno was the leader of the Lima-based extortion gang Los Injertos del Cono Norte and was reportedly described by the national police commander, General Óscar Arriola, as “the most insane criminal in recent years”. He allegedly has ties to the major Brazilian gang Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC).