The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has promised to take action ('do more') following the conclusion of an internal investigation into human rights abuses. The investigation was launched after a series of articles by BuzzFeed News in 2019, in which the WWF was accused of collaborating with and funding anti-poaching guards who were reportedly torturing and killing people in national parks across Asia and Africa.

“We are deeply and unreservedly sorry for the victims,” said a WWF statement.

The 160-page report claims that the charity's actions “should have been more transparent” and “more robust in calling on national governments to uphold human rights”.

Some people have pointed to a “lack of regret” on the part of the WWF following the report's publication, demanding both an apology and changes to the organisation's governance.

What are the accusations? What are we talking about?

In March 2019, BuzzFeed began publishing a series of articles accusing the WWF of “sponsoring brutal paramilitary groups to fight poaching”. According to the articles, armed guards have shot at local residents and villagers (in national parks in Nepal and Cameroon), beaten them unconscious, subjected them to sexual violence, and whipped them, the news site claims.

The conservation organisation sponsors, equips, and works with these guards, according to the report, which mentions that some senior staff at the organisation simply “turned a blind eye” to this type of abuse.

BuzzFeed revealed that it had carried out a year-long investigation across six countries, based on more than 100 interviews as well as documents including confidential reports, internal budget plans, and email correspondence discussing the purchase of weapons.

Following the publication of the BuzzFeed report, the WWF decided to investigate the circumstances mentioned in the series, promising to complete the investigation as quickly as possible.

The independent panel of experts was chaired by the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

What is included in the report?

The panel of experts concluded that there is no evidence that WWF staff directed or participated in any of the abuses mentioned in the articles; the described actions were committed by representatives of local authorities, not by staff of the conservation organisation (WWF).

The report does, however, criticise the WWF’s response to the allegations of abuse, particularly the way the organisation collaborated with local governments and responded to (handled) complaints. For example, the report highlights the WWF’s work in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Specifically: WWF staff “were aware of the risk that eco-guards might violate human rights,” the report says, but “did not develop an effective plan to prevent this and respond to abuses”.

When WWF staff reported human rights abuses to senior WWF officials in the Congo in 2016, the senior management’s decision to investigate the allegations was not implemented, “apparently out of concern” for resistance from the local (Congolese) conservation group.

“The desire to avoid conflict with local leadership is no excuse for the fact that the WWF did not fulfil its obligation to respect human rights,” the report states.

Another section examines the situation in Kaziranga National Park in India. In 2017, the BBC reported that government officials were given authority to shoot at suspected poachers to protect wildlife. One campaigner told the BBC that large animal conservation groups, including the WWF, had “turned a blind eye” to such actions by park staff.

Referring to the BBC article, the report states: “The actions of the WWF India office should not be interpreted as support for a ‘shoot-on-sight’ policy”; the office learned of the many allegations from news reports; its support for India’s state forest services has been “considered and appropriate”.

The panel of experts argued that, apart from in recent years, “there has been no consistent or unified effort to investigate complaints of human rights abuses reportedly committed by so-called eco-guards in the Congo Basin and forest guards in Nepal and India”.

The same group reported that the World Wide Fund for Nature’s “diverse and complex structure” and the local and national organisations operating under the WWF umbrella “further complicated” the process of how reports of abuses were handled.

The expert panel recommended that the WWF implement its own human rights protection policies more rigorously and promote operational transparency.

“We are saddened and shocked by reports of human rights abuses by state forest guards against local communities, which unequivocally contradict our values,” the WWF statement, published alongside the report, claims. “We can and will do more.”

The conservation group has also published a Management Response on how it will implement the expert panel’s recommendations, and has promised to “regularly and transparently assess progress within the organisation”, starting next year.

What has been the reaction?

However, other conservation groups and organisations have criticised the WWF’s response and demanded changes.

Rainforest Foundation UK accused the WWF of a “lack of regret” regarding the information contained in the independent report. The organisation stated that despite the expert panel’s “damning findings”, the World Wide Fund for Nature “has not taken responsibility for its own failures, nor has it apologised to those people who have suffered because of human rights abuses committed in the fund’s name”.

Rainforest Foundation UK is demanding accountability from WWF leaders for the organisation’s “long-standing failure to prevent, detect and remediate the human rights abuses that have been exposed across its various programmes”.

In a joint statement signed by Rainforest Foundation UK and other conservation groups, including the Forest Peoples Programme, they point to the “most significant findings” of the expert panel’s report regarding what happened in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“We urge the World Wide Fund for Nature to fully implement the report’s recommendations, to investigate the true extent of human rights abuses in the programmes it implements, to offer an apology that is understandable to all those who have experienced and survived violence committed in its (the fund’s) name, and to provide compensation to victims where necessary,” the statement says.
(Translated from English)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55069926
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/26/you-have-stolen-our-forest-rights-of-baka-people-in-the-congo-ignored