Coercive conservation on trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo

In the final days of 2020, 10 ecoguards in two national parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo were found guilty of serious crimes: murder, rape, torture and actual bodily harm. The crimes were perpetrated against indigenous Batwa people living just outside Kahuzi-Biega and Salonga National Parks. In both cases, ecoguards committed terrible human rights abuses against people who have already been displaced from their ancestral territories and who face a daily struggle for existence as a result.

The people concerned were sentenced to between five and 20 years in prison for their crimes. Their employer, the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), has been ordered to pay large amounts of money in compensation to the victims in both cases and to the widow of the murdered man in the Kahuzi-Biega (PNKB) case.

This is a step change in how the courts treat abuse by ecoguards, and Forest Peoples Programme hopes that these two cases represent the start of a change of approach in DRC. In 2017, one PNKB ecoguard was acquitted of murder and convicted of the lesser crime of aggravated injury; he served a sentence of just one year. In the Salonga case, six ecoguards had previously been acquitted of gang rape and torture. APEM and Rainforest Foundation UK, with support from FPP, accompanied the victims in submitting a case for appeal and on 28 December 2020, five of those previously acquitted were found guilty and imprisoned for between five and 20 years. In the PNKB case, decided on 31 December 2020, the court found all five ecoguards guilty; two of murder and three of actual bodily harm.

The 10 individuals who were found guilty have indeed committed terrible crimes, but they were trained and armed by a national conservation institution which has persisted in demonising and criminalising indigenous peoples for many years. From FPP's perspective, this is where the focus should be: on the institution and the model of “conservation” it practices. Throughout 2020, the PNKB management accused Batwa people of a whole range of infractions and crimes on very dubious grounds, whilst refusing to attend court when its own staff - employed, trained and armed by itself - were up in court for murder and assault. The five ecoguards, now found guilty of very serious crimes, never presented themselves in court and have been redeployed by ICCN to other areas. They are still working for the same institution and are very likely to still be in a role that involves them carrying firearms.

This abusive, coercive approach to dealing with the very communities who could be the leaders in protecting their traditional lands has to come to an end. ICCN and the donors to the conservation sector in DRC need to face up to their basic responsibilities for the respect of human rights. We hope that these verdicts will encourage conservation actors at every level in DRC to rethink their approach and to deal with the communities whose lands they are occupying with respect and in a spirit of cooperation.

Photo: ICCN guards in PNKB, by Dominique Linel