Update: Batwa communities and Kahuzi-Biega National Park

Forest Peoples Programme is no longer going to invest in efforts to facilitate dialogue between the management of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Batwa communities living around the Park.

Our observation of the process is that the park authorities have shown no willingness to meet any of the commitments they have made to communities in previous discussions and instead have taken the route of violence and intimidation in order to keep Batwa people out of the Park by force. As a result, FPP will seek other legal, peaceful routes to support the Batwa communities in their struggle to have the historic injustice done to them recognised and their rights respected.

The Batwa people living beside Kahuzi-Biega National Park have spent the last 45 years demanding justice for their forcible expulsion from their ancestral lands. They were expelled in 1975 to make way for an extension of the Park – from land where they had lived for centuries. Made landless and impoverished by their expulsion, the Batwa have been dispossessed by an approach to conservation that assumes that communities and the preservation of biodiversity are incompatible.

Last week, eight Batwa people were given prison sentences of up to 15 years, following a one-day trial in front of a military tribunal at which they had no opportunity to present their case or choose their own defence lawyer. They are now facing horrifying, life-threatening conditions in prison for many years. Their families and other members of Batwa communities around the park continue to live in total precarity, with no land and little means of earning a living, intimidated by the authorities.

The arguments put forward by the park authorities were that the eight people who were sentenced had illegally invaded the Park, had borne arms and had destroyed the forest by charcoal burning. The group were all civilians and recognised members of a community that had previously participated in a number of meetings with the Park authorities in which they explained their grievances and in which the Park authorities made a number of promises, none of which have been respected. The eight defendants were charged with these offences in a one-day trial, in front of a military tribunal and in a blaze of publicity that assumed their “guilt” before the trial even started. The defendants had one day’s notice and no opportunity to choose their defence lawyer or call witnesses. This was a flagrant abuse of their right to a fair trial and illustrates the extraordinary odds against which the Batwa communities are battling.

For many years, and with increasing intensity since 2014, FPP has been supporting the Batwa in their efforts to reach an agreement with Kahuzi-Biega National Park that recognises their rights and the injustices done to them, at the same time as ensuring the continued survival of the unique landscapes and habitats of Kahuzi-Biega. The communities and FPP and their partners have been working hard to reach an agreement via dialogue, recognising that communities and  conservationists can and should be allies.

However, we have seen no demonstration of commitment to the process from the park authorities, who instead are showing an increasingly heavy-handed approach that is based on violence, intimidation and locking people away without due process.

As far back as 2014, the Park authorities recognised that one of the fundamental problems was that the Batwa have forcibly been made landless and that they continue to have deep and strong attachments to their ancestral lands, now inside the park boundaries. Promises have been made, on at least three separate occasions, to try and find a solution – by identifying available land outside the park and negotiating access to their lands inside, or by identifying lands inside the park that the Batwa can live in, use sustainably and help protect. These promises have not been kept.

There is no available land outside the park and there is a flat refusal to seriously consider other arrangements on the part of the park management. For example, FPP negotiated a ‘Shield Strategy’ with the park authorities in November 2019, whereby the park would recognise Batwa land rights as a way of also strengthening the conservation effort, but this was accompanied and followed by intimidation of the Batwa not negotiation with them. The Batwa have been left in an impossible situation, which, in the absence of any progress from negotiations, is what prompted some of them to choose to return to their ancestral lands back in October 2018.

FPP has reached the conclusion that the nature conservation authority in DRC, ICCN, and the park management, PNKB, are not seriously interested in a genuine dialogue. Genuine dialogue requires give and take by both sides, rather than one side seeking to trample on the other. There is no point in us continuing to try to persuade the Park to enter into a genuine dialogue with communities. There is also no point in us trying to persuade communities that PNKB and ICCN are serious about entering into a genuine dialogue chaired by an independent mediator where both parties to the conflict have equal voice.

If the park authorities demonstrate in a practical manner their genuine commitment to not only dialogue but fulfilling the promises they have already made to the community, then we will always be willing to re-engage in dialogue. In the end, there will have to be genuine and respectful exchanges between the Park and the communities. But for the present, we will have to embark on a very different route as we seek to establish the conditions for rights-based rather than intimidation-based conservation.