Rwanda- Indigenous peoples and local communities from more than 40 African nations convened in Kigali on 16 –17 July to create a Declaration for the first Africa Protected Areas Congress held by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Kigali, Rwanda.
Below is the declaration:
Africa Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), Kigali Declaration at the 1st Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC) 2022
“We are Nature”
We, representatives of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, our organizations, and networks in Africa from more than 40 African nations convened in Kigali, Rwanda on 16 –17 July 2022, to undertake our full and effective participation in the first IUCN’s Africa Protected Areas Congress (APAC), do make this declaration. This being a culmination of sub-regional gatherings and convenings that happened: Victoria Falls Declaration, Zimbabwe – June 25, 2019, the Ouagadougou Declaration by the ICCA Consortium’s West Africa & Sahel assembly 21 November 2021, Goma declaration of the ICCA Consortium’s Central Africa assembly 9 March 2022, Laboot Declaration of the ‘East Africa Assembly on Land Justice and Indigenous Peoples Co-operation’ on 11-13th June, and 17-19th June 2022 and the Nairobi Declaration of the Regional IPLCs PreAPAC meeting,15 – 16 June 2022.
Taking into account the many commitments and declarations providing for and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, as listed in Annex 1.
We note:
We note the progress made by governments, development partners and others in recognizing and advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), but a lot remains to be done. We are far from where we need to be.
We are heartbroken and outraged by the violent land appropriation and brutal displacement of communities all over Africa in the name of conservation and tourism development. How can governments that are supposed to protect their people, instead be killing their people? We reject such appropriation and assert our inalienable right to own, govern, care for, and use our lands, resources, and waters.
There is continued displacement of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, loss of life, land and livelihoods, and subsequent criminalization of community livelihoods over contested landscapes and waters. There is persistent silence by international conservation organizations, donors, and partners; few actively condemn violations of human rights and the rights of IPLCs.
We take care of our lands, resources, and waters. We do this even better when our collective ownership and resource use rights are legally secure. These are in every sense, our ‘territories of life’.
IPLCs protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity, yet only 6% of protected areas registered across Africa are under the ownership or governance of Indigenous Peoples or Local Communities. The majority of Protected Areas are state owned and managed, and increasingly private, control.
Despite the 2010 deadline for the implementation of the Durban Accord and Action Plan little progress has been achieved. Key commitments such as restitution of IP lands and meaningful participation have not been implemented.
IPLCs continue to struggle to secure legal recognition of their land, territories of life, resources and waters and their legal and cultural identity, and other human rights. Our lack of secure land and territorial rights continue to render us squatters on our own land and are vulnerable to alienation by powerful economic and political forces including governments, local and international investors. Our sustainable resource use rights are further threatened by external stakeholders. Some of these threats are advanced by research, media and academia that have contributed to the idea of Africa as a place emptied of human presence via documentaries shot to depict wildlife without human interactions. This imagery is not a reflection of reality.
The concept and application of the IUCN categorization of ‘Protected Areas’ water down the IPLCs philosophy of conservation anchored on the relationship between people, land, and nature. Its categorization has shifted national and global attention in favor of care for the environment only; with a focus on wildlife conservation in “protected areas”.
Therefore –
We commit to:
- Speak up and speak loudly: to actively share our grievances and demands with local and national government actors, organizations and donors. This includes bringing ideas and solutions to the table.
- Deploy our wisdom, energies, and traditional knowledge in advancing the conservation and sustainable use of our biodiversity in a way that is culturally appropriate and rights- based.
- Continue to sustain intergeneration traditional knowledge transfer through our cultural ways and forms.
- Bring our natural resource domains under proactive protection and rehabilitation, working collaboratively as equal partners with state and non-state conservation bodies where this is required
- Recognize and reinforce our governance and management capacity, by drawing upon best traditional practices and the best of modern requirements for inclusive decisionmaking; establishing measures to limit elite capture and financial measures to limit corruption, and institute measures to ensure that those we designate to lead and act on our behalf do so with full accountability to community members.
Set up a pan-African IPLC body as a platform for our shared concerns, actions, programmes and cross-learning among states and to follow up the implementation of this declaration; anchored in national and sub-regional networks.
We call on:
Governments to:
- Advance their efforts to recognize and respect the customary collective tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. This should be in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, African Charter, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as embracing the Human Rights Based Approach underscored in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
- Implement the 2003 World Parks Congress Durban Accord and Action Plan and UNDRIP by prioritizing the restitution of lands and redress, where sought and needed and Refrain from establishing new protected areas.
- Respect and implement international and regional decisions of the various AU mechanisms and structures. Respect includes ceasing resistance to the implementation of already awarded resolutions and judgements.
- Recognize that secure collective ownership is a basic prerequisite for sustained community led conservation resulting in protection of natural resources.
- Extend the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent as ruled once and for all by the African Court in June 2022 as applying to IP, to all land and water dependent local communities and applied in all proposals which affect local lands, waters, and resources.
- Ensure that achievement of the proposed 30 x 30 target will not result in the loss of any IPLC lands, resources, waters, and territories but will, instead, engage, enable and empower Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to be the primary stewards of these areas.
- Recognize that the dysfunctional colonial conception of conservation and its inherent values and moralities are at variance not only with our cultural and land use rights, but also with the local sovereignty over natural resources.
- Ensure the upholding of human rights guides every aspect of conservation in Africa, including preventing mass evictions.
- Ensure access to justice to resolve historical injustices related to conservation through compensation, reparations, and restitution for the loss of land, waters, territories, and livelihoods by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and repair the harm suffered by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.
- Establish robust grievance and redress mechanisms for addressing current and historical grievances in a transparent, fair, and accountable manner.