What to do about street harassment in Peru

What counts as sexual harassment in public spaces

Law 30314 defines sexual harassment in public spaces as “conduct, physical or verbal, of a sexual nature or connotation carried out by one or more people against another or others, who do not want or reject that conduct” (Article 4). It doesn’t require physical contact or a specific location: it covers the street, public transit, a park, a beach, a shopping center.

For conduct to fit the law, Article 5 asks for only two elements:

1. An act of a sexual nature or connotation.
2. The victim’s express rejection — unless the circumstances prevent them from expressing it (fear or shock, for example) or the victim is a minor, in which case the victim doesn’t need to express rejection for the conduct to count.

The conduct it covers (nobody has to touch you)

Article 6 gives a non-exhaustive list of manifestations. Among those confirmed in the law’s own text:

• Sexual comments or insinuations.
• “Obscene gestures that are unbearable, hostile, humiliating or offensive.”
• Inappropriate touching, body contact, or groping.
• “Exhibitionism or showing genitals in transit or public places.”

It’s an open list: the law doesn’t require the conduct to match one of these categories exactly, as long as it meets the two elements of Article 5.

It’s an administrative offense, punished by your municipality

Article 7 requires local governments to establish, by ordinance, “administrative procedures to report and sanction sexual harassment in public spaces through fines.” That means two practical things:

• Law 30314 itself doesn’t set the fine amount — each municipality’s ordinance does. There is no single nationwide figure.
• The reporting channel also varies by district, because each municipality designs its own procedure.

This page can’t give you a fine amount valid for all of Peru, because the law itself delegates that decision to each local government — any figure presented as “the national fine for street harassment” isn’t backed by Law 30314.

The Police Registry of offenders

Article 12 creates a Police Registry of Reports of Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces, where “anyone reported and found responsible is entered.” The law also requires a case-handling protocol and, for schools, their own internal reporting system.

Where this law ends and something else begins

Law 30314, in the text reviewed for this page, creates a municipal administrative offense — not a prison sentence. If what you experienced included aggressive physical contact, threats, sustained following, or anything that made you fear for your safety, that may amount to a separate crime under the Criminal Code, and the right path is the police station or the Fiscalía, not the municipal administrative procedure. This page doesn’t verify or cite that crime because we couldn’t confirm its exact text against an official source this round — it will be updated once verified.