Armed ecoguards funded by WWF 'beat up Congo tribespeople'

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Armed ecoguards funded by WWF 'beat up Congo tribespeople'

Exclusive: Inquiry into $21.4m conservation project reports ‘credible’ evidence of abuse

John Vidal
Fri 7 Feb 2020 17.27 GMT
Last modified on Fri 7 Feb 2020 18.24 GMT

Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of the Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests, an investigation into a landmark global conservation project has heard.

A team of investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years, according to a leaked draft of the report.

The allegations, reported to the UN last year, included Baka tribespeople being beaten by the ecoguards, the criminalisation and illegal imprisonment of Baka men, summary evictions from the forest, the burning and destruction of property, and the confiscation of food.

In addition, the UNDP’s social and environmental compliance unit heard how the ecoguards allegedly treated the Baka men as “sub-human” and humiliated some Baka women by forcing them to take off their clothes and “be like naked children”.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/07/armed-ecoguards-funded-by-wwf-beat-up-congo-tribespeople

[lunasun]

1. people of the forest not included in plans until too late

A separate study commissioned by the WWF from the international NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) found that WWF had only consulted the Baka communities likely to be affected by the park seven years after the idea had been conceived and long after discussions with government and logging companies had begun.

“[By then] it was far too late in the process. Information provided to communities has been incomplete and provided late,” the FPP report said.

Stephen Corry, the director of tribal defence NGO Survival International, said: “This UNDP report is a devastating indictment which should spell the end of WWF’s model of ‘fortress conservation’ which has caused so much damage to people and the environment throughout Africa.