Lara Domínguez
Published: 2020-12-17
Total Pages: 16
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In April 2019, WWF appointed an Independent Panel of Experts to assess its role in connection with alleged human rights violations in and around protected areas supported by WWF in Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, Nepal, and India. The alleged abuses included multiple instances of murder, rape, torture, physical beatings, unlawful arrest and detention, invasion of homes, and destruction and theft of personal property committed by ecoguards whose activities WWF helped fund and support. The Panel’s report, published in November 2020, found that in all the protected areas under review, WWF had knowledge of the alleged abuses. In half of these protected areas WWF failed to conduct investigations and in the remaining protected areas it only commissioned investigations several years after the alleged incidents were first reported. The Panel’s findings confirm that, over many years and in multiple countries, WWF consistently failed to take adequate steps to prevent, respond to and remedy alleged human rights abuses in and around protected areas it supports. Despite these clear findings, the Panel’s executive summary and accompanying press releases from both the Panel and WWF have obscured the scope and nature of the Panel’s findings with respect to WWF’s failure to uphold its human rights commitments. To counter this mischaracterization of the Report, the alternative executive summary contained in this briefing elucidates and clarifies the Report’s salient findings, based on a thorough review of what the Panel actually determined through the course of its investigation. In so doing, it points to some of the deeper structural reforms necessary to address the flaws in the coercive conservation model that lies at the root of the allegations subject to the Panel’s investigation.