Overview
- The Permanent Commission of Congress approved the bill in a second vote Thursday with 14 in favor, 9 against and no abstentions, advancing Proyecto de Ley 14337/2025-CR to the next legislative stages.
- The draft creates a new Title XIV-B in the Penal Code to expressly define crimes against humanity and to distinguish them from ordinary crimes.
- Under the text, acts such as murder, torture, enforced disappearance and sexual violence qualify as crimes against humanity only when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population and with knowledge of that context.
- The bill applies to cases already in process and to sentences under review, excludes events before July 1, 2002 (the date the Rome Statute entered into force for Peru) and sets prison terms of 15 to 30 years for convictions under the new typification.
- Author Fernando Rospigliosi argues the change will strengthen legality and judicial predictability, and the draft’s passage means courts and prosecutors could soon use the new definitions to narrow or reframe which past and ongoing cases qualify as crimes against humanity.