Conservation groups have made progress setting up complaints systems in protected areas in the Congo Basin, but there’s still a ways to go, the Rainforest Foundation UK says in a report released last week.

Called grievance and redress mechanisms, or GRMs, these systems meant to be a safety valve for people living near forests marked for conservation in the event they suffer human rights abuses by wildlife rangers or park administrators.

In some cases, these are phone hotlines. In others, a conservation NGO or contracted local organization receives complaints directly or through a community representative. After a human rights scandal in Congo Basin protected areas led to U.S. congressional hearings in 2021, donors and conservationists said they’d work to strengthen complaints processes to prevent future abuses.

USAID, for example, published guidelines on how to set them up in 2022.

In its report, RFUK said there had been “positive steps” since then in the Congo Basin, but that many protected areas still lack a complaints process. For those that have one, there was little data on the outcome of complaints made through them.

“Living up to commitments on GRMs means not only far greater investment in accessible, culturally appropriate and third-party mechanisms but also far greater disclosure of complaints received through the establishment of a public registry,” RFUK executive director Joe Eisen said in a message to Mongabay.

The group said it sent questionnaires to representatives of protected areas and conservation organizations across four Congo Basin countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In all, it gathered 22 responses that covered 24 protected areas.

Only around a third of those protected areas had a system for gathering human rights complaints, and most didn’t make public the details on how they work.

Administrators with Ntokou Pikounda National Park in the Republic of Congo, which receives support from WWF, were said to have denied a request by a local organization for documents related to the park’s complaints procedure.

In an email to Mongabay, WWF said it was “still reviewing” RFUK’s report. The group added that it’s made efforts to implement the recommendations of an independent panel that reviewed its human rights record in 2020, including by setting up GRMs in parks where it works.

“While we have made strong progress, we also know that delivering inclusive conservation is an ongoing process and appreciate recommendations that help us continue to further improve and learn from our work,” a spokesperson wrote.

WWF has published its own set of rules for grievance mechanisms. But in a 2023 review of its implementation of the independent panel’s recommendations, the group pointed to challenges it’s faced in setting the processes up where it works, including finding adequate funding and competent third-party contractors.

RFUK said the only park with a fully operational grievance mechanism is Salonga National Park in the DRC — where some of the most egregious human rights abuses have occurred. Salonga’s process includes a role for a third-party organization, intended to prevent conflicts of interest when complaints are investigated.

The report described Salonga’s GRM as one of the better ones in the Congo Basin, but said there was little information about how many complaints had been filed, or whether any had led to remediation for past abuses.

Overall, fewer than half of the parks that had a GRM made data on complaints available to the public.

“Boosting transparency of these processes is key to allow for independent monitoring and scrutiny,” RFUK wrote in its report.

RFUK’s research follows on a report released separately by the Government Accountability Office, a U.S. congressional watchdog agency, which said there were significant shortcomings in new human rights rules for U.S. overseas aid to conservation groups. The GAO said the rules were a sign of real progress but that lax follow-through and monitoring requirements meant they might not be enforced.

“The continuing lack of independence and transparency of protected area GRMs in the Congo Basin, where they exist at all, is essentially the by-product of a conservation model that still privileges biodiversity objectives over accountability to local people,” Eisen said.

Banner image : Ecoguards gather in Monkoto, DRC for a ceremony commemorating the completion of their latest round of training: 90 days of instruction on topics including first aid, self-defense, wildlife laws and the importance of respecting human rights during encounters with community members and poachers. Image by Molly Bergen/WCS, WWF, WRI via Flickr  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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