La Commission africaine crée un précédent important pour les droits fonciers des peuples autochtones dans la conservation des forêts de la RDC

05 août 2024

Forest Peoples Programmes (FPP), Amnesty International (AI), Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Programme (IPLP) and Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) welcome the landmark decision the African Commission of Human and Peoples Rights made last week in favour of the Batwa people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Following a decades long legal battle, the Commission found that the DRC government violated multiple human rights protected by the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights (The African Charter) in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (PNKB, by its French acronym) in eastern DRC.

The Batwa were expelled from their ancestral land in the 1970s to create the park and were given no compensation and no other land to live on. They have been campaigning for the DRC to return their land to them ever since. This decision from the African Commission recognises for the first time not only that the DRC violated the Batwa’s rights when establishing the PNKB, but also that ‘fortress conservation’ - a conservation model based on creating strict protected areas that excludes people - failed to achieve environmental objectives.

Joe Eisen, RFUK Executive Director, said, “This decision from the African Commission is an important milestone in the struggle against fortress conservation in the Congo Basin. We now urge the DRC government and its international partners to provide redress for the Batwa and the countless other victims of DRC’s other strictly protected areas and to commit to achieving the goal of protecting 30 percent of the national territory by 2030 (‘30x30) through rights-based, community-centred approaches.”

Read our statement ici.

canopy of lowland rainforest at dawn with fog, Danum Valley Conservation Area,Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

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