Justice served: The Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega and the failure of fortress conservation
MRG today launches a new report: Justice served: The Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega and the failure of fortress conservation.
The indigenous Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega are widely recognized as some of the original inhabitants of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For millennia, they lived in harmony with the biodiversity-rich forest surrounding Mounts Kahuzi and Biega. The forest provided everything they needed, and they considered themselves integral to it.
In the 1970s, everything changed when the DRC government created a national park, the Parc National de Kahuzi-Biega (PNKB), on Batwa lands. Violently expelled from their ancestral home, the Batwa were forced into decades of grinding impoverishment, severe discrimination, landlessness and skyrocketing mortality in informal settlements on the outskirts of the park. Those who attempted to return in 2018 were met with a three-year campaign of organized violence resulting in death, rape and forced displacement.
The story of the Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega is an archetypical example of the ‘fortress conservation’ model – nature conservation premised on the false assumption that effective conservation necessitates land rendered devoid (by force if necessary) of human habitation and use. The evidence that protected areas or national parks are an effective method of biodiversity conservation is weak, whereas the fact that they have led to the displacement of millions, widespread dispossession, evictions, hunger, ill health and human rights violations, including killings, rapes and torture across Africa and Asia is well documented.
Governments, development agencies and international conservation organizations are fortress conservation’s major drivers. Instead of recognizing the vital role of indigenous knowledge and practices in sustainable land stewardship, they uphold a violent, anti-indigenous and neocolonial status quo. In a landmark 2024 ruling, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights held that the DRC government had violated the Batwa’s land and other rights in creating the PNKB, that the fortress conservation model is ineffective for conserving biodiversity and that indigenous peoples are the best guardians of nature.
The Commission’s decision is therefore certainly historic for the Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega, who had for years awaited justice and reparations for the crimes perpetrated against them, but it is also a milestone for indigenous peoples’ rights across Africa and beyond. It sets historic and vital legal precedents that will help indigenous peoples seeking redress for the harms of fortress conservation and sends an essential message that indigenous knowledge and practices are key in fighting the climate crisis. Justice served: The Batwa of Kahuzi-Biega and the failure of fortress conservation provides a useful summary of the Commission’s decision and describes the background to the legal case.
Featured image: A man from the Batwa community walks on felled trees in deforested land on the edge of Kahuzi-Biega National Park. January 2022. Credit: Ed Ram.
