NGO WORK

Godfathers, politics eating up wetland

Published

5 years ago

June 24, 2020

| MUBATSI ASINJA HABATI | The sprawling Kehong Farm in Lubenge in Luweero district produces rice, bananas, eggs, and chicken meat. It is the pride of the area with its Chinese machines and scientific methods and a promise of over 30,000 jobs when fully operational.

But the success has a sting in its tail that President Yoweri Museveni appears unable to escape from. The 1,000 hectares on which Kehong Farm sits is partly what is technically called a `wetland’; an area of land that is permanently or seasonally water-logged. That means it is a protected area under the law and no development is allowed on it under the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) guidelines.

But somehow, the Chinese Kehong Group acquired the land in 2016 as the China-Uganda Agricultural Cooperation Industrial Park and the farm was officially opened by President Museveni amidst protests from environmental activists.

Meanwhile, almost in panic mode, the Minister of State for Environment; Beatrice Anywar, is daily seen threatening to evict ordinary Ugandans who occupy wetlands. She recently embarked on a tour in Kalungu district, under heavy police escort, ordering peasants on tiny half acre patches to vacate wetlands or else they will be forcefully evicted.

Minister Anywar’s threats to peasants in wetlands and President Museveni’s embrace of big Chinese farms in the same wetlands appear to be a contradiction but they may not be. It appears that if you have the right sums of money or the right Godfather, you are above the Uganda wetland laws.

“The people who build factories in wetlands have godfathers in the central government,” says the Luweero district Chairman Ronald Ndawula.

Ndawula was attempting to explain to The Independent why, in his view, presidential directives on wetlands are never implemented.

He was commenting on a June 04 speech in which President Museveni condemned investors who build factories in wetlands.

While giving his annual State of the Nation Address, Museveni mentioned several areas where factories have been built in wetlands and called that “a mistake”.

“We want more and more factories, but build on dry land, not the wetlands,” the President said.

Then he added: “Those already built or being built should be allowed to continue. Demolishing an already built factory is not common-sense. They are very expensive and very useful.”

Perhaps unknown to the President, his comments reinforced an already entrenched practice which has seen some investors constructing at breakneck speed in wetlands, including at night. The goal is to ensure that their development is up and, therefore, unbreakable.

Arthur Bainomugisha, executive director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), a non-government organisation, says what appears to be defiance is actually a reflection of how politics has killed institutions.

“I think the institutions charged with managing the environment have been weakened. And they have been weakened by politics. The legal regime is in place but politics always interferes with NEMA’s activities,” Bainomugisha says.

As a result, factories of varying beautiful designs, size, and function have been built in wetlands all over the country. Driving along major highways leading out of Kampala and other towns and urban centres, one sees rows upon rows of steel framed factory buildings and sprawling farms in former wetlands.

On the Kampala Jinja highway, for example, one can count hundreds of such factories. Such factories include Abacus Parenteral Drugs Ltd (APDL), Tian Tang Group, Global Paper, Landy and others. Uganda’s main industrial park, in Namanve outside Kampala lies on 1000s of hectares of what were once wetlands.

The factories produce goods previously imported into the country, making them cheaper and available. Some of the products are being exported, bringing in the much needed foreign currency.

Tian Tang Group produces metal products such as iron bars and steel sheets, APDL produces infusion products like IV fluids, eye, ear and nasal drops. Such economic gains appear to dwarf any environmental benefits from wetlands that conservations speak of. No wetland is safe.

Environmentalists argue that construction in wetlands deprives the marshland of its water storage and filtration roles, kills plants and animals whose only habitats may be a wetland. But these benefits are indirect, almost invisible while the money from salaries of factory workers, taxes, and sale of products areas are as visible as the clouds of dark smoke fuming from the factory chimneys.

Effects of encroachment on wetlands

There was a time when almost 16% of Uganda’s surface area was wetland. Since building factories in wetlands became normal, it is not clear how much of the remains.

The latest Biomass study indicates that in the last 15 years, the country has lost 569,021 hectares of wetlands in various parts of the country.

The 2019 water and environment sector review report shows that the wetland cover has reduced from 15.6% in 1994 to 8.4% in 2019.

A 2015 study by researchers at Makerere University states that 56% of the original Nakivubo wetland in Kampala had been modified, mainly due to industrial development and small-scale farming.

Another study by World Bank study found that the eight major wetlands in Kampala district declined from 18 percent to 9 percent of the area between 2002 and 2010.

Across the country, urbanisation, industrial development and agriculture have spurred swamp losses, influencing the rise of severe flash floods; particularly in eastern Uganda. They destroy infrastructure, homes and crops. People drown.

There are 25 major wetlands systems in the country that treat wastewater and serve as a source of safe water for local communities, according to the Wetlands Management Department. But data from Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment indicates that up to 30% of Uganda’s wetlands were lost between 1994 and 2008. In this period, Uganda’s wetlands reduced from 37,575.4 sq. km in 1996 to 26,307.7 sq. km in 2008.

NGO WORK

Press Release | African Women in Action: AfDB, Reparations NOT Debt!

Published

3 days ago

July 28, 2025

witnessradio.org

The Regional Week of Action taking place from 28 to 31 July 2025, is part of a growing movement demanding reparations from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for decades of financing extractive, patriarchal, and profit-driven “development” on the continent. It is an important moment of Pan African mobilisation for women on the frontlines of resistance against AfDB funded maldevelopment in Africa.

“AfDB, Reparations NOT Debt” is the message that hundreds of women in West and Central Africa will voice as they carry out their bold, vibrant actions to challenge the destructive development model financed by the AfDB. Communities and particularly women whose livelihoods and ways of life have been destroyed by the construction and exploitation of mega-projects such as hydroelectric dams, mining, monoculture plantations and other big developments, will rally to call attention to the impacts they face.

The recent AfDB Counter Space held from 21-23 May in Abidjan was aimed at shifting the mainstream neoliberal development narrative and help create space to strengthen solidarity and resistance to AfDB’s continued support for maldevelopment in African communities, concluding in the Abidjan Declaration.

Across five countries – Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Guinea – communities will participate in public testimonials, creative actions, community, and online mobilisations, and amplify official demands for reparations. They will make visible the true costs of extractive mega-projects on their land, their livelihoods, and nature.

Women from Batchenga in Cameroon and Bomboré in Burkina Faso will gather during this week to share traditional practices and techniques for crafting organic fertilisers to restore their land and preserve ecosystems. In Côte d’Ivoire, women from Singrobo are joining hands for a day of awareness-raising and intergenerational dialogue around a memory tree.

“We are not against development. We are against destruction. If ‘development’ is destruction in disguise, then we say NO,” said Massaouda, a community leader in Niger and member of the steering committee of the AfDB, Reparations NOT Debt campaign.

The campaign: “AfDB, Reparations NOT Debt” calls for:

An immediate end to destructive mega-extractive projects.
Reparations for women and their communities affected.
A transition to ecofeminist alternatives centred on people, not profit.

This Week of Action is a continuation of regional mobilisations in 2023 and 2024 and marks a new stage in the struggle for reparations in Africa.

Source: WoMin

NGO WORK

Toxic platforms, broken planet: How online abuse of land and environmental defenders harms climate action

Published

1 week ago

July 24, 2025

witnessradio.org

Land and environmental defenders risk their lives advocating for their communities’ rights against destructive industries. Often, they serve as the planet’s last line of defence, sounding the alarm about existential threats to humanity.

Their efforts frequently expose them to dangers to their safety and wellbeing. Every year, Global Witness documents these harms. In our 2024 report, we found that 196 people were murdered for defending their land and homes. Many more were abducted, criminalised and silenced by threats.

Defenders often rely on digital platforms to organise, share information and campaign. In recent years, these online spaces have become many defenders’ main channels for communication with key audiences, and are frequently relied upon for community organising. However, we now know that they suffer significant harms in these online spaces, from trolling, to doxxing, to cyberattacks.

An Indigenous activist photographs another community member after a protest march for Indigenous land rights in Brazil. Land and environmental defenders often rely on digital platforms to spread awareness about their campaigns. Mario Tama / Getty Images

Global Witness conducted a global survey – the first of its kind – to understand defenders’ experiences online. We found that online abuse is very common among defenders who responded to the survey, and frequently translates into offline harm, including harassment, violence and arrests.

This not only hurts defenders’ wellbeing but also has a chilling effect on the climate movement, with many defenders reporting a loss of productivity and, in one case, even ending all their activism due to the abuse.

Our survey shows the challenges defenders face on social media.

The situation is so dire that 91% of the defenders who responded to our survey said that they believe digital platforms should do more to keep them and their communities safe.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Social media companies’ business models prioritise profit over user safety. They can and must do more to help protect these individuals by properly investing in algorithmic transparency, content moderation, and safety and integrity resourcing.

Improving these measures will not only keep defenders safe online but will also benefit all users everywhere.

An Indigenous person documents the Acampamento Terra Livre (Free Land Camp) on a smartphone in Brasilia, Brazil

An Indigenous person documents the Acampamento Terra Livre (Free Land Camp) on a smartphone in Brasília, Brazil. Cícero Pedrosa Neto / Global Witness

A note on sampling: Surveying land and environmental defenders

Land and environmental defenders are a difficult group to reach en masse. Many such individuals have very real and immediate security concerns that require them to be highly careful about how they discuss their activism. No professional survey company has a panel of defenders available for polling.

We therefore had to manually contact defenders’ organisations by a variety of means and do our best to ensure that we had as many people as possible from as many different places respond to our survey.

We acknowledge that our survey sample is therefore not representative of all defenders and, given the nature of the survey, we have not sought to verify the accuracy of their statements.

This report is the first of its kind focusing specifically on the digital threats faced by land and environmental defenders, and the role that social media platforms play in this. We have built on our existing networks to reach hundreds of defenders globally.

This report is a crucial effort to uncover the nature of online harm faced by those on the frontlines of the climate movement and another puzzle piece in understanding what it means to stand in the way of climate breakdown.

These shocking and previously untold stories must prompt real action from social media platforms, who have often failed to act on reports of abuse.

Toxic platforms, broken planet

Widespread online attacks

Many land and environmental defenders experience abuse

92% of the land and environmental defenders who responded to our survey say that they have experienced some form of online abuse or harassment as a result of their work.

The online harms that these defenders report being subjected to range from public attacks on social media, to doxxing, to cyberattacks.

Doxxing

Doxxing (short for dropping docs) is the act of publicly revealing someone’s private or personally identifiable information without their consent, typically with malicious intent. This information can include real names, addresses, phone numbers, workplace details, financial information and even family members’ details.

Doxxing can be used as a form of harassment and intimidation of defenders, and it can lead to serious consequences like stalking, identity theft, swatting (making a false emergency call to send police to someone’s home) or physical harm. It is generally considered unethical and is illegal in many jurisdictions.

Cyberattacks

Cyberattacks are malicious attempts to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorised access to computer systems, networks, or data. These attacks can take many forms, including:

Phishing (tricking someone into giving up sensitive information)
Malware (malicious software like viruses or spyware)
Hacking and data breaches (gaining unauthorised access to steal, alter or destroy information)

The impact of this abuse is significant, with high numbers of defenders reporting feelings of fear and anxiety for themselves and their communities. Almost two-thirds of the defenders who responded to our question on the impact of the abuse they suffered say that they have feared for their safety and almost half report a loss of productivity.

This means that there is a real risk that this online abuse is impacting defenders’ campaigning, which impedes progress on climate action and solutions.

Something clearly needs to change, and the platforms on which a lot of this abuse occurs must bear some of the responsibility.

When we dig a little deeper into the data from the survey responses, some disturbing trends emerge.

Activists from Extinction Rebellion march through Berlin dressed as billionaires, including Big Tech CEOs Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

A Facebook problem

Defenders say they receive abuse on Facebook more than any other platform

Globally, Facebook is the platform that the highest number of defenders say they have suffered abuse on. The next most cited platforms for abuse are X and WhatsApp. Instagram is the fourth most common platform on which abuse has occurred.

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are all owned by Meta.

These results may in part reflect the popularity of Facebook overall as a platform (it has over 3 billion monthly active users, making it the largest social networking site globally).

Nevertheless, our survey has revealed that 82% of defenders who say they have suffered abuse online say that they have been abused on at least one of Meta’s three platforms.

Based on this data, Meta therefore holds a huge amount of responsibility when it comes to finding ways to address online harms to defenders.

The results shift slightly when comparing responses from different regions. For example, among defenders in Europe almost the same number reported experiencing abuse on X as on Facebook.

According to this survey, X therefore also holds a level of responsibility when it comes to addressing online harms to defenders.

We set out below a selection of first-hand accounts of defenders who agreed to speak with us after completing our survey. These accounts reflect the defenders’ personal experience and are given in the defenders’ own words.

Read the full report at: Global Witness

NGO WORK

Solidarity statement in support of communities and ILC Africa members in special circumstances.

Published

1 week ago

July 24, 2025

witnessradio.org

Solidarity statement in support of communities and ILC Africa members in special circumstances. ILC Africa stands in unwavering solidarity with our members and communities who continue to face land injustices and other human rights violations due to forced evictions and land/natural resource-related conflicts in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Kenya. Across Africa, large-scale land acquisitions continue to pose significant challenges, particularly for millions of rural communities who live on and depend on land for their livelihood.

While these land deals are promoted as opportunities for agricultural investment, biodiversity conservation through fortress conservation, and economic growth, they frequently lead to displacement, loss of livelihoods, and social conflicts. This is particularly concerning because many affected communities lack formal land titles, making them vulnerable to dispossession without adequate, fair, and just compensation.

Additionally, weak governance and unclear land tenure systems exacerbate tensions, as foreign investors and governments prioritize commercial interests over the rights of communities. In some cases, these acquisitions have fueled protests and unrest, highlighting the urgent need for transparent policies that protect land rights and ensure equitable development.

Since June 2022, the Maasai communities in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area have faced ongoing uncertainty and fear of displacement from their ancestral lands, as commercial tourism investments threaten their ancestral homes. Repeated instances of violent forced evictions have intensified their plight. Although we acknowledge the steps taken by the Government of Tanzania to facilitate dialogue through the establishment of two presidential commissions tasked with examining the underlying causes of the land crisis in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Loliondo, we underscore the importance and need for genuine and inclusive engagements with stakeholders that will result in human rights centred solutions in the interest of the thousands of affected communities.

Similarly, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Rwandan Army’s military occupation of Eastern DRC in early 2025, through the proxy of M23, has thrust local communities, including ILC’s member Union Pour L’emancipation De La Femme Autochtone (UEFA) and the communities they work with, into a state of turmoil and instability. Despite mounting international pressure and emerging diplomatic efforts, Rwanda’s persistent actions appear to be driven by a longstanding interest in exploiting the region’s rare minerals, vast agricultural lands, and securing strategic transport corridors to establish a dominant logistics position in East Africa.

The ongoing conflict in the DRC has inflicted widespread devastation on communities across several regions particularly in South and North Kivu provinces, Mwenga and Shabunda regions, Bitale and Kalonge, Idjwi, Bunyakiri, Bukanga-Lonzo and Maï-Ndombe province among others. This conflict has unleashed a deepening humanitarian crisis marked by widespread displacement, violence, and economic collapse. Communities are grappling with mass exodus, destruction of homes and farmland, and pervasive human rights abuses—including rape, extortion, kidnappings, and murders. Civilian infrastructure has been repurposed or blocked, access to basic services has crumbled, and families are enduring hunger, illness, and extreme overcrowding. Women and children are particularly vulnerable, facing targeted violence and loss of livelihoods. The war, driven by foreign interest in minerals, land, and strategic routes, is tearing apart the social fabric and plunging already fragile populations into greater instability.

In Kenya, the Ogiek people’s fight for justice took a critical turn during a compliance hearing at the AfricanCourt on Human and Peoples’ Rights, reaffirming their rightful ownership of ancestral lands in the Mau Forest and ordering reparations. However, despite past rulings in 2017 and 2022, the Kenyan
government’s continued delays led to renewed suffering. Most devastatingly, in November 2023, over 700 Ogiek were forcibly evicted from Narok County, with homes, schools, and property burned—despite clear court orders forbidding such actions. The community faced severe losses and emotional turmoil, underscoring persistent violations of their rights.Delays in implementation continue to harm lives and disrupt livelihoods, while the ongoing disregard for collective land rights weakens the broader framework
of Indigenous Peoples protections across Africa.

In the face of these multiple adversities, the struggle of these communities is not just for their own survival but also for the preservation of ecosystems and the rights of future generations.

We call on the respective governments, relevant authorities and private actors responsible for the persistent land and natural resource related conflicts and forced evictions to:

Immediately and unconditionally ceasefire by all armed actors to halt the violence and protect civilians including land and environmental defenders.
Facilitate and create an enabling environment for an inclusive and genuine dialogue with the affected stakeholders that will result in human rights centered solutions to the long standing land and natural resource related forced evictions and conflicts.
End all forms of forced evictions including those justified by conservation goals or carbon-credit projects, and respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, including women and youth.
Respect and enforce court orders from both national and international judicial bodies.Secure the legal recognition of the communal land rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local
Communities and deliver just through reparations for historical land injustices.
Protect land and environmental defenders from violence and persecution and hold perpetrators accountable for human rights violations.
Support sustainable and people centered conservation models that prioritize the well-being of local communities.

We call on International and Development Partners to:

Support the international advocacy and lobbying efforts of the communities: by amplifying calls for justice and accountability. Coordinated lobbying can help maintain pressure on the Government to uphold commitments to fair land policies and prevent forced displacements.

We call on the civil society to take urgent action:

Strengthen the social movement by fostering unity and resilience across all affected areas. This includes mobilizing communities to stand together in opposition to any government directives that threaten land security. A unified stance will enhance the community’s capacity to resist external pressure.
In the case of the Maasai of Ngorongoro Conservation Area, we invite the CSOs and other relevant non-state actors to support the on-going Ministerial and Presidential (Through the two Commissions of Inquiry into the land question and the relocation process). Engagement with key government ministries, such as the Ministry of Land, Livestock, Natural Resources, and Tourism, and the Ministry of Local Government. The objective is to ensure these institutions fully understand the root causes of the ongoing crises and are influenced to support just and sustainable solutions.

ILC Africa remains steadfast in its commitment to advocating for justice and fair land governance across the continent, standing with communities in their fight for dignity, land security, and human rights.

Source: International Land Coalition-ILC