(MENAFNEditorial) Cote d''Ivoire: Arbitrary Evictions in Protected Forests
Forestry Agency Implicated in Violence, Extortion
NEW YORK, United States of America, June 13, 2016/APO (African Press Organization)/ --
Residents of Côte d’Ivoire’s protected forests live in fear of arbitrary evictions and have suffered extortion and physical abuse by forest conservation authorities, Human Rights Watch and the Ivorian Coalition of Human Rights Actors (Rassemblement des Acteurs Ivoriens des Droits Humains, RAIDH) said today. The Ivorian government should halt all forced evictions, investigate and prosecute abuses, and introduce legislation that provides farmers with the protections required by international law.
The Forestry Development Agency (Société de Développement des Forêts, SODEFOR), a state agency under the Water and Forests Ministry, regularly evicts farmers without warning, often burning their homes and possessions in the process. Farmers are also frequently beaten and humiliated during eviction operations.
“Families are being violently evicted from the land on which they have lived and worked for years, and are seeing everything they own destroyed in an instant,” said Jim Wormington, West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The lack of oversight of SODEFOR’s operations has left these communities vulnerable to abuse.”
Côte d’Ivoire’s 231 protected forests (forêts classées), state land set aside for conservation, have been devastated by deforestation, with more than half of the country’s four million hectares of protected forest cut down for farmland. As part of its efforts to combat climate change, announced prior to the December 2015 Paris climate summit, the Ivorian government in September restated its intention to restore protected forests as part of a broader commitment to return at least 20 percent of its territory to forest.
While conserving forests can play an important role in combatting climate change, however, environmental protection measures should respect the human rights of people living in protected forests. International law protects anyone who occupies homes or land from forced evictions that are not preceded by adequate notice or do not respect the dignity and rights of those affected, regardless of whether they occupy the land legally.
In May 2015 and March 2016, Human Rights Watch and RAIDH conducted week-long research missions to the protected forests of Cavally, Goin-Débé and Scio in western Côte d’Ivoire. These forests, in which cocoa farms run by small-scale farmers have replaced vast tracts of forest, typify the challenge the Ivorian government faces in protecting the environment while respecting the rights of farmers.
Human Rights Watch and RAIDH interviewed more than 85 community leaders, union activists, SODEFOR officials, and farmers, including 25 people whose homes or plantations had been destroyed by SODEFOR during eviction operations spanning 2014 to 2016.
None of the families evicted, many of whom had lived in protected forest for years, had been notified in advance of when the eviction was to occur, as required by international law.
Several people interviewed showed researchers the burned out remains of their homes, with their charred possessions still visible inside. Villagers said that they were not given the opportunity to remove their belongings before their houses were set alight.
“My house was in the first courtyard as you enter the settlement, and as soon as SODEFOR arrived they started burning down the houses,” said one farmer, who said his house was set alight while his newborn baby slept inside. “Fortunately my wife heard the firing and shouting, and she rushed back to the house to save the child. SODEFOR hadn’t checked to see who was in the house before they set it on fire.”
For communities in protected forests, many of whom rely on their land for cash crops and food to support their families, the impact of losing their longtime homes and livelihoods is severe. “Without our land in Goin-Débé, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” one farmer said. “The people you see today have practically nothing to eat…We don’t even have enough food to give us the energy to work.”
Community leaders and aid workers said that SODEFOR failed to ensure that families who have been evicted and are unable to provide for themselves have adequate alternative housing or productive land, as international law requires.
Many community leaders and farmers also said that SODEFOR officers regularly use the threat of eviction to solicit money or other ‘gifts,’ including livestock. “He told me that a commander from a nearby town will be coming,” said a farmer, recounting a recent call with a SODEFOR officer. “So I understood that to mean the reception we give them should be bigger than usual.”
One farmer said that he had paid a SODEFOR agent 75,000 CFA (US$125) in February 2015 to spare his plantation during an eviction operation. But when SODEFOR returned in December 2015, he was away from his plantation and had been unable to make the payment necessary to protect his crops. “I lost 18 hectares that were either burnt or destroyed,” he said. “I wasn’t there to persuade them otherwise.”
Farmers who fail to give money to SODEFOR agents also risk arrest and prosecution. Côte d’Ivoire’s forestry code criminalizes farming in protected forest without prior approval, and SODEFOR frequently arrests and detains farmers during eviction operations.
Community leaders told Human Rights Watch and RAIDH, however, that whether farmers are prosecuted frequently depends on their ability to pay SODEFOR officials to secure their release. One cocoa buyer said that after he was arrested in Goin-Débé, SODEFOR agents told him, “Give what you can and we will leave you alone.” He gave them 200,000 CFA (US$334) and was released.
Human Rights Watch and RAIDH also documented several incidents in which eviction operations were accompanied by violence against farmers arrested or detained by SODEFOR. Three farmers said SODEFOR agents, upon arriving in their village in January 2016, forced them and more than a dozen other young men to lie on the ground and then whipped them across their backs and buttocks with sticks, belts and the flat side of machetes.
The farmers were then taken by SODEFOR to a nearby town, where SODEFOR agents told one of the detainees to pretend to shoot a video as other prisoners were beaten. “They made us get into a prayer position, on our knees facing forward,” said one of the farmers, who needed three days of hospital treatment following the abuse. “They told him to hold a wooden block on his shoulder, like he was filming us with a camera – I guess it was a way to humiliate us.”
To prevent future abuses, the Ivorian government should immediately halt forced evictions until it passes legislation giving occupants of protected forest protection from arbitrary evictions, and should find a long-term solution that would both conserve protected forests and protect residents’ rights. SODEFOR officers implicated in physical abuse, extortion, or criminality should be investigated and prosecuted.
“An immediate halt to forced evictions is the only way to prevent further abuses,” said Bamba Sindou, General Coordinator of RAIDH. “Côte d’Ivoire should urgently investigate alleged abuses by SODEFOR and prosecute those agents implicated in criminality.” Distributed by APO (African Press Organization) on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).