Country: Sierra Leone

New SLAPP of the agro-industrial group SOCFIN

Posted on by fredsaxo

SOCFIN is an agro-industrial group specialising in the cultivation of oil palm and rubber. The group is controlled by the Belgian businessman Hubert Fabri (54.2% of the shares) and by the Frenchman Vincent Bolloré (39% of the shares). For several years, SOCFIN has been expanding its plantations in several African and Asian countries. In total, the multinational controls more than 400,000 ha of land (which is more than 1.5 times the territory of Luxembourg) and its plantations increased from 129,658 to 194,300 ha between 2009 and 2018.

This expansion is detrimental to small farmers and is often accompanied by violations of the rights of local communities, land conflicts, risk of deforestation, pollution, poor working conditions, as well as criminalization of human rights defenders, among others. 

These impacts have been documented in numerous NGO reports and articles by the press,  but also by UN bodies. In an attempt to silence criticism, the SOCFIN and Bolloré groups have regularly taken legal action. Over the past ten years, nearly thirty defamation proceedings have been launched against NGOs and journalists. The systematism of these procedures demonstrates a real strategy of SLAPPs*. Although almost never successful, these procedures aim to intimidate NGOs and journalists, silence them and make them financially vulnerable.

New complaints of calumny, insults and violation of privacy are brought by the SOCFIN group and Hubert Fabri. They concern a report by the human rights NGO FIAN Belgium on Sierra Leone, as well as a series of press releases from the NGOs (11.11.11, CNCD-11.11.11, FIAN Belgium, SOS Faim Belgium and SOS Faim Luxembourg) and an awareness-raising campaign conducted during the SOCFIN General Assembly in Luxembourg in May 2019. This action, carried out in a totally peaceful manner, aimed to raise public awareness of the situation in the affected communities and to challenge the company's leaders.

In parallel to these proceedings, NGOs were informed that a defamation case has also been launched by SOCFIN in Sierra Leone against a human rights defender from the NGO Green Scenery.

The NGOs prosecuted denounce attempts of intimidation, especially since the NGO’s employees are targeted. 

NGO lawyers Jacques Englebert (Belgium) and Pierre Hurt (G.-D. of Luxembourg) also deplore these practices and insist:

“The NGOs under attack play an essential role as defenders of fundamental rights. They are “watchdogs of democracy” and their expressions therefore benefit from special protection, in particular under the European Convention on Human Rights. Their freedom of expression must be protected at all costs. Indeed, it constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and one of the essential conditions for its progress and the development”.

The NGOs concerned strongly contest SOCFIN's accusations and claim to have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the facts reported in the reports and press releases published are accurate and in the public interest. They state that they are determined to continue to defend the rights of the affected local communities and are in line with the campaign initiated in France under the slogan #OnNeSeTairaPas.

For press enquiries please contact:
In Belgium:
[FR] Florence Kroff – FIAN Belgium: +32 475 84 56 24 / florence@fian.be
NL] Hanne Flachet – FIAN Belgium: +32 484 96 04 30 / hanne@fian.be
In Luxembourg:
[FR] Marine Lefebvre, SOS Faim Luxembourg: +352 49 09 09 96 26 – mlef@sosfaim.org

*Definition of “SLAPPs”:
The SLAPP can be defined as a legal action aimed at hindering political participation and activism. Most often, it is a civil defamation suit brought against an individual or organization that has taken sides on a public issue. The concept also includes threats of prosecution, because the success of such an operation does not seem so much from a victory in court as from the process itself, aimed at intimidating the defendant (the one under attack).
 

Securing communal lands and forests

Posted on by fredsaxo

Since October 2014, FIAN International, together with African CSOs academic and non-profit research institutions have been inquiring into  the conditions under which the CFS/FAO Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) can serve to increase bottom-up accountability amidst the pressures of the  global rush for land.  Current approaches are changing the use of land and water from small-scale, labor-intensive uses like peasant farming for household consumption and local markets, toward large-scale, capital-intensive uses such as industrial monocultures linked to metropolitan areas and foreign markets.

Last week, the findings were presented to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union, the African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa (LPI-UNECA) and to the regional office of FAO. Held in Abuja, the dialogue which followed focused on what ECOWAS can do to support efforts of bottom-up accountability across West Africa, particularly in the framework of the Land Policy Initiative of the African Union and of the implementation of the CFS VGGT.

During the three years of the participatory action research, several African NGOs involved in the project, namely National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali and the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing (CNOP-CMAT), Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, were able to successfully anchor their community organizing, actions and deepening reflections on the VGGT to hold local officials and transnational companies accountable in Large Scale Land Acquisition (LSLA) deals.

The research found that LSLAs impacted women and men differently. Forced evictions, land dispossessions, inadequate compensation for livelihoods and biodiversity losses, environmental degradation, as well as other LSLA related activities, resulted in landlessness or limited access to land. This negatively impacted social cohesion and peace and increased the burden of household food provision on the shoulders of women, as the latter sometimes had to; take full responsibility of malnourished kids, as well as ensure that there was food on the family table. Considering this finding and its implication for food security/sovereignty within the affected communities, it is important to engage with ECOWAS in the context of its ’Zero Hunger Initiative‘ which will work at local level with family farmers, at national level with governments and civil society and at regional level with ECOWAS countries for the promotion and realization of the right to food in the region.

As noted by Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director of ERA small scale farmers “should be supported to assert their communal land rights to farmlands in order to promote staple food production rather than the promotion of transnational corporations such as Wilmar-PZ involved in land grabbing for palm oil that is mainly for export”.  “Since Africa can feed herself, therefore, we must promote a culture of food crops for food to feed the teeming population rather than fuels for machines and cars. Thus, expanding the frontiers for the African Convergence for food will be essential to support,” he stressed.

Commenting on empowering local communities, Ibrahim Coulibaly, President of CNOP-CMAT , noted:  “we must work to put development parameters in the hands of local people, therefore local organizing and ownership of lands through VGGT and communal land rights should be the areas of policy change to favour local farmers and the prevention of large scale land acquisitions.” We implemented multi stakeholder roundtables to carry a common message on customary land tenures, especially around the process of the new Agricultural Land Law in Mali. The Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles West Africa will continue to liaise with the relevant authorities such as ECOWAS to ensure land that community land tenure is respected across Africa”.

The environment is our life, it is not for sale.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

  • The organizations and academic and non-profit research institutions involved in the project are the following: National Coordination of Peasant Organizations of Mali and the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing CNOP-CMAT Mali, Environmental Rights Action ERA/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Katosi Women Development Trust KWDT-Uganda, Masifundise Development Trust MDT-South Africa, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLASS) and Transnational Institute.
  • The project was funded by the International Development Research Centre Government of Canada (IDRC).

Sierra Leone: Six land rights activists released through citizen solidarity

Posted on by fredsaxo

Today, a group of Sierra Leonean Civil Society Organizations, held a press conference in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, to celebrate the release of six MALOA activists (Malen Land Owners and Users Association). These individuals have defended the rights of the Malen communities following land grabbing by the Socfin Agricultural Company Ltd., a subsidiary of the Belgo-Luxembourg group Socfin. A petition in support of the MALOA struggle was also handed over to the President of Sierra Leone and called for the end to the criminalization of human rights defenders in Malen. On the same day, West African members of the Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles and international civil society organizations sent a letter to the President urging to cease violations of the communities’ right to food and nutrition and requesting that the land dispute in the region be resolved peacefully.

Since 2011, Socfin Agricultural Company has acquired over 18,000 hectares in the Malen region in southern Sierra Leone, for an industrial plantation of oil palms. From the outset, communities have denounced the lack of transparency and participation in these agreements and the negative impacts on their rights and livelihood. As a result, several community members gathered at the heart of the MALOA organization in an effort to uphold their rights. Regrettably, they are consistently confronted with repression and judicial harassment. Following several incidents, dozens of MALOA members were arrested and imprisoned. In February 2016, after more than two years of trial, 6 MALOA leaders were sentenced to up to 6 months in prison or fines totaling over $ 35,000 for crimes of “conspiracy”, “incitement” and “the destruction of 40 palm seedlings”. Crimes for which they pleaded not guilty.

Local communities and international civil society mobilized and coordinated a fundraising campaign against this unjust sentence in support of the 6 leaders. This display of civic solidarity eventually led to their release between February and May 2016. “We are delighted to have contributed to this release, which will help appease the anger of Malen communities,” announced Joseph Rahall, executive director of Green Scenery, an environmental and human rights organization in Sierra Leone. “We are back to continue defending the rights of our Malen brothers and sisters and to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict,” stated Shiaka Sama, one of the six executive members who faced imprisonment and spokesman of MALOA.

During the press conference, a petition asking to protect the MALOA activists and to put an end to their criminalization, and which gathered more than 120,000 signatures from across the world (through Rainforest Rescue sites, Peuples Solidaires-ActionAid and Avaaz), was also presented. The petition was to be handed over to the Government of Sierra Leone after the event.

In parallel, more than forty organizations from the social movements in West Africa, members of the Global convergence for Land and Water Struggles and organizations of international civil society, drafted a letter calling on the government of Sierra Leone to take the necessary measures to ensure the respect and protection of the human rights of the Malen communities.
Additionally, the signatories urged international partners of Sierra Leone to intervene in favor of a peaceful resolution of the conflict in accordance with their extraterritorial human rights obligations, particularly in the context of the implementation of the guidelines on land governance in Sierra Leone and the “land partnership” agreement concluded between Sierra Leone, the FAO and the Federal Republic of Germany.

For media enquiries, please contact the press focal point:
Manuel Eggen – FIAN Belgium : +32 2 640 84 17 / letter to the President of Sierra Leone and the background of the case (June 2016).
You can also see a previous letter by the Global Convergence for Land and Water Struggles – West Africa in support of Maloa.

For more information about the arbitrary detention and judicial harassment against several members of MALOA, visit the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders here.