Milagros Salazar

Milagros Salazar, Peru, is a reporter with IDL-Reporteros, the country’s premier investigative journalism team, and a correspondent for Inter Press Service.

Over a 15-year career she has been a reporter and editor in several national newspapers, including La República, where she covered politics. Since a new Peruvian mining boom started in 2004, she has specialized in covering social conflict in mining zones. She has investigated extractive industries, environmental issues and the human rights violations that occurred during the two-decade conflict (1980-2000) between the state and leftist guerrilla groups.

In 2011, Salazar published with IDL-Reporteros a multi-part investigation that exposed fraud in Peru’s fishing industry, the second largest fishing industry after China. Using computer-assisted reporting tools, she revealed widespread cheating at fishmeal plants that allowed companies to overfish and evade taxes. The probe was later expanded in partnership with The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as part of its Looting the Seas investigation into the plundering of the South Pacific.

Salazar teaches investigative journalism to college students and is conducting academic research on political power and the mining industry. She has a master’s degree in human rights from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and has participated in various courses organized by George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management as well as the United Nations Development Programme.