Conservation must begin with respecting human rights

On International Human Rights Day, we celebrate Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. At long last the world is increasingly hearing their voices, acknowledging their rights to sustainably manage their resources, and respecting their ecological knowledge.

But despite recent successes, much more needs to be done.

Human Rights Day exposes long road ahead for local community rights. Black lives matter everywhere.

We have an unprecedented opportunity to challenge entrenched ideas about who is a legitimate champion of conservation and whose views matter.

For example, a recent editorial in The Times takes a spectacularly uninformed position on wildlife conservation in Africa. We will no longer tolerate external interests arrogantly wielding their influence to the detriment of African people. We support the Community Leaders Network in calling out The Times’s hypocrisy by perpetuating falsehoods while warning against misinformation. And we criticise The Times for writing about policies that will materially affect the lives of millions of Africans in an article that does not contain a single African perspective.

Read Community Leaders Network’s letter to The Times in full here and Resource Africa’s letter to The Times in full here