- The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights determined that the eviction of thousands of Batwa from Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the 1970s was a human rights violation. However, months later, questions remain about whether and how the government will implement the commission’s 19 recommendations to address the situation.
- The return of Batwa to their ancestral lands in the park, paying them compensation and a public apology for all the Batwa suffered are among the key recommendations the Batwa and sources highlighted. Implementation would be challenging, but necessary from a human rights standpoint, they said, while breaking down the process.
- Researchers say there lacks evidence that modern-day Batwa are custodians of the forest and environmentalists highlight the need to build community-centered conservation projects that help Batwa live sustainably on their land in the park or find a balance that works for both the Batwa and park officials.
- The DRC and park officials have not yet commented on the possibility of implementation, but conservation authorities and the park’s partners and donors say they are taking steps to reconcile Indigenous rights and the protection of biodiversity.
In a historic 2022 ruling, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights found that the forced eviction of the Indigenous Batwa community from the Kahuzi-Biega National Park was a violation of their rights. With this communication, made public in June 2024, came a list of 19 recommendations for the DRC government to implement to address a series of rights violations. While Indigenous, civil society and human rights organizations say they are hopeful, months after the communication, questions remain about whether and how the government will implement the recommendations.
“The president promised to respect the rule of law. We hope he will implement the decision,” said Bahati Malenga Majafu, a Batwa man living outside the park.
The government did not respond to requests regarding their plans, however an official of the park shared that there are efforts to address the conflict.
“We are currently in a process to find sustainable solutions to reconcile the needs of the Indigenous communities and the protection of biodiversity,” Arthur Kalonji, acting director of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, told Mongabay. He did not directly refer to the commission’s recommendations.
The Batwa were evicted from the lush forests of eastern DRC in the 1970s during a campaign to formally create a park and protect a section of the Congo Basin. Thousands of people were forcibly removed from the forests they conserved for generations with no compensation or alternative land. They’ve lived in a state of extreme poverty, facing discrimination, high mortality rates and loss of culture. The commission’s communication against these events comes at the heels of a 2022 investigation by the NGO Minority Rights Group (MRG) that found violence, rapes and killings by park eco-guards and soldiers against the Batwa who ventured into the park. Though the DRC’s national protected area agency (ICCN) did not agree with all the investigation’s findings, they acknowledged nearly a dozen violent abuses.
Among the commission’s 19 recommendations, several key ones stand out, said Gentil Amuli, lawyer and executive director of the rights organization Centre of Hope for Human Rights.
These are the return of Batwa to the park with titled lands, paying them compensation and a public apology for what the Batwa suffered. Some sources said the recommendation to withdraw non-Batwa persons from Batwa lands remains a noteworthy, though potentially contentious, decision.
Many human rights groups have long called for the Batwa’s return into the park, though the subject is debated on conservation grounds. Some researchers say that Batwa members have recently been involved in extensive deforestation in what is habitat for endangered silverback gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) or that the region remains too dangerous. Others, mostly advocates, maintain the Batwa are in fact custodians of the forests or prefer to stick to human rights grounds that underline Batwa rights to their land, regardless of how they live on it. Still, others try to reconcile both positions by favoring conservation projects that support Batwa people to live more sustainably on their lands.
But all sources Mongabay spoke to acknowledged the process to implement the recommendations would be challenging, especially as this region in the east of DRC is marred by war and armed militants in the park’s forests.
“It’s still challenging to implement the decision at a national level. … The problem is still complex,” said Alexandre Kabare III, King of the Kabare Territory, a kingdom in the South Kivu province where part of the Kahuzi-Biega Park is located.
“There will be no easy way after decades of misguided conservation practices, land-grabbing, wars and a well-established though largely illicit extractive industry [in the park],” agreed Frédéric Mousseau, policy director at the Oakland Institute.
One step needs to be taken at a time, sources say, and the acknowledgement by the commission of fortress conservation’s human rights abuses and that Indigenous peoples play an important role in safeguarding biodiversity on the African continent is a “historic” first step with implications for other parks that have evicted inhabitants. The next steps should be concrete actions, and it might be a matter of prioritization, they said.
Some human rights groups, like MRG, which filed the case to the commission, are awaiting a signal by the DRC government, like a proposed timeline to implement the recommendations, as a sign that officials are onboard. Without any action by officials, this decision risks being just a piece of paper, said Joshua Castellino, executive director of MRG.
“In the next one to three weeks, they ought to articulate some kind of kind of a plan,” Castellino said. However, months later, the government has yet to share a timeline.
Getting down to the nitty-gritty
Manassé Sirire Christian, a Batwa woman, said she hopes that one day her children will live on their own land.
After being dispossessed of land and living in poverty, they have faced ridicule, Batwa sources told Mongabay. Compared with the destitution and expanding agricultural frontier outside of the park, the forests their ancestors lived in look lush with opportunity. “Our fathers lived a good life. Our ancestors are buried there. There is everything: medicinal products, traditions, origins,” said Bahati Malenga Majafu, who believes the hearts and souls of the people driven from the land remain in the park.
According to Mousseau, the reintegration of the Batwa into the park could be successful if it’s accompanied by other measures on the list.
“This would also require actions that are not mentioned in the list. The elephant in the room is the illicit extraction of minerals in the east [of the DRC] that leaves a trail of human and environmental devastation and continues to fuel a war that has taken the lives of millions in the area and inflicts violence and insecurity upon the locals,” he said.
Donors and partners of the park, like KfW and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), also need to be brought onboard to support Kahuzi-Biega National Park’s authorities to help implement the recommendations, human rights organizations said. This includes helping curb illicit extraction and violence in the region.
“If these funders are serious about the human rights they claim to profess, then it is imperative upon them to no longer fund … if the government doesn’t take actions. Because it goes against the heart of what the commission is saying in terms of African law,” Castellino said. They will also be failing their own human rights due diligence obligations, he said.
But this has faced some ambivalence. The German state-owned development bank KfW told Mongabay it finances activities on the basis of applicable law only, while the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights findings were a communication directed to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A KfW spokesperson also said that the “German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through KfW supports ICCN and their partner organization WCS in their efforts to protect Kahuzi-Biega National Park with the objective to implement international human rights and protected area management standards having a specific focus on promoting the human rights of Batwa Indigenous Peoples.”
The commission’s communication is a legal judgment based on the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, of which the DRC is a signatory. However, unlike the African court, the commission lacks the power to enforce laws when it determines that a state violated the charter. According to lawyers, the recommendations are there to guide the government to take steps to come back in line with the charter but they are nonbinding, unlike court decisions.
This is a challenge in the way of implementation, said lawyers and human rights organizations that have to find a way to persuade states, already reluctant to follow court orders, to comply. If a party wanted to escalate this issue to the African court, only another state or the commission could do that.
In a statement, park partner WCS said it took note of the commission’s conclusions and underlined its commitment to Indigenous rights, though it did not comment on the 19 recommendations. Rather, the organization highlighted its public-private partnership agreement with the ICCN as a way to “build a new paradigm” for the park in a way that protected both people and nature. This comes with reforms such as training rangers in human rights, including the Batwa in park management and offering them educational and health benefits, it stated.
Kalonji, acting director of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, said he sees this public-private partnership as a “crucial step” to ensure that conservation policy recognizes and respects the rights of Indigenous peoples living around the park.
Critics, on the other hand, call for more as it falls short of giving Batwa people titled lands in the park.
Reconciling people and nature
Fergus O’Leary Simpson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp’s Institute of Development Policy focusing on conservation in the DRC, said the communication highlighted important issues regarding social justice, the failure to compensate Batwa and offer them alternative lands for an adequate life. But statements by the commission that modern-day Batwa pose no danger to biodiversity lack evidence and do not match realities on the ground, he said.
“Most of the Batwa probably did live a low-impact subsistence lifestyle in the past. However, analysis of satellite images and extensive on-the-ground fieldwork reveals thousands of hectares of deforestation in the park’s highland sector since groups of Batwa returned to the area in October 2018. Prior to this period, forest cover in this region of the park was relatively stable.”
Though the Batwa are not the only people responsible, the authors of a paper found that various chiefs are involved in selling resources like timber and access to the park to other groups, including armed actors, and help organize the production of charcoal in the protected area. Allowing thousands of Batwa to return could lead to more forest clearance in the park’s highland sector, one of the few forests in the area not cleared by agriculture, Simpson told Mongabay.
In a conversation with Mongabay, a Congolese lawyer working with Batwa people said that some would also like to build schools and roads in one section of the park to rebuild their lives and move out of poverty.
Meanwhile, Indigenous advocates maintain that Batwa people are largely caretakers of forests and it is individual Batwa who might be at fault for extractive supply chains. According to Deborah Rogers, president of the NGO Initiative for Equality, the Batwa have been used as scapegoats when illicit extractive activities are found in the park, pointing to a statement by Batwa accusing park officials of the illegal timber trade.
For human rights lawyers and groups, modern Batwa lifestyles should not exclude the fact that the they have a legal right to the land in the first place. “It is not up to us to suggest any protocol around how the Batwa should live on their own land,” Mousseau said.
Others involved in conservation are trying to find a way to reconcile both environmental protection of this biodiverse slice of the Congo Basin and the human rights of a marginalized group of people. According to environmentalists we spoke to, this is a conversation that should include the Batwa.
“On the one hand, human rights must be preserved and on the other, biodiversity must be protected through environmental protection measures,” said Ghislain Kabuyaya, a local community conservation activist and environmental consultant for the ICCN.
Inclusive conservation approaches that respect Indigenous rights and involve these communities in environmental protection as equal partners are increasingly highlighted by environmentalists as best-practice conservation approaches. Since the park is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the ICCN sees the area as a space where Batwa should not be, there are missing measures to find a balance between human rights and the need to protect biodiversity, Kabuyaya told Mongabay.
There will need to be a dialogue with the ICCN and the Batwa people to find “lasting solutions that work for both sides,” or else the conflict will simply continue, he said. They will also need to collaborate on a sustainability plan if the Batwa were to return to the park.
This will require political will and trust building on both sides, sources said.
Sustainability plans with Indigenous communities include forestry concessions managed by communities, which are common in this region of the DRC. Currently, there are efforts by local organizations to build an ecological corridor that links Kahuzi-Biega National Park with other parks in the area by titling many community forestry concessions and linking them together. Other options include sustainable jobs, bioeconomy programs, ecotourism or agreeing on alternative lands with the government, said sources. In Paraguay, after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the Indigenous Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa communities were denied their land rights, the government and communities agreed to an alternative parcel of land.
Regarding the 18 other recommendations, sources said some are easier than others.
For Mousseau of the Oakland Institute, the government’s passing of the law on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples back in 2022 already puts into action some of the commission’s recommendations to pass laws or change legislation to protect Batwa rights.
But the recommendation to remove other ethnic groups from Batwa ancestral lands or deciding whether people of mixed ancestry have a right to land in the park might be tricky, as some other ethnic groups also consider themselves Indigenous to the forests, Simpson told Mongabay.
And Amuli maintained that public apologies were among the most important recommendations. “[They] are necessary for these governmental wrongs,” he said.
Meanwhile, at the boundaries of the park, Thierry Kitumaini, a Batwa man, said he’s in a hurry to return and remains hopeful.
“The officials of the state must respect the findings. Udongo ni utajiri [The land is a treasure].”
Banner image : Landscape near Kahuzi-Biega National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo. Although little-known outside the region, Kahuzi-Biega offers world-class gorilla trekking and a rare chance to see critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas in the wild. Image by Molly Bergen/WCS, WWF, WRI via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Citations :
Simpson, F. O., Kristof Titeca, et al (2024). Indigenous forest destroyers or guardians? The indigenous Batwa and their ancestral forests in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, DRC. World Development, 186, 106818–106818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106818
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