The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights has found that the violent forced eviction of the Indigenous Batwa community from Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo was a violation of their human rights. That’s according to a press release from the London-based nonprofit Minority Reports Group (MRG) and Environnement, Ressources Naturelles et Developpement (ERND), a DRC NGO.
The Batwa people are thought to have lived in the Kahuzi-Biega forests for centuries. In 1970, the area was made a national park, and a decade later designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. People weren’t allowed to live in national parks, so overnight the Batwa were forcibly removed from their ancestral forest home by armed guards.
“We did not know they were coming,” a Batwa widow from the area previously told the advocacy group Survival International. “Then suddenly one of them forced the door of our house and started shouting that we had to leave immediately because the park is not our land. I first did not understand what he was talking about because all my ancestors have lived on these lands.”
The Batwa became conservation refugees. Many became squatters on land just outside the new park. Those who returned to their ancestral lands were subject to violence at the hands of park guards and soldiers with the DRC army, according to a 2022 report by MRG titled “To Purge the Forest by Force.”
In 2015, MRG and ERDN filed a case on behalf of the Batwa people with the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. They successfully argued that the violence inflicted on the Batwa was a violation of human rights.
The commission in its decision that was made public in June this year, declared that “the Kahuzi-Biega Forest has been the ancestral home of the Batwa People since time immemorial,” and that their “occupation of the forest did not constitute any danger to biodiversity.”
The commission has also put forward a list of recommendations to the DRC government. This includes making a full public apology to the Batwa people; acknowledging the abuse by park rangers; rescinding all laws that prohibit the presence of the Batwa on their ancestral lands; compensating the Batwa; and granting them titles to their ancestral land within the park.
Samuel Ade Ndasi, African Union litigation and advocacy officer at MRG, said in the press release that this decision should set a precedent that no Indigenous group should again be evicted in the name of conservation.
Batwa community member Joséphine M’Cibalida added that the ruling made her hopeful.
“While we were hunting, state agents invaded our community and burned down our homes, leaving us homeless and destitute,” M’Cibalida said in the press release. “We lost everything, including our dignity as human beings. This ruling brings us hope that we will receive justice for the harm done to us.”
Banner image of Batwa women courtesy of USAID Biodiversity & Forestry/Flickr (public domain).
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