Human rights violations from REDD projects include a killing, criminalization of activists, violent evictions of tens of thousands of peoples, as well as threats to cultural survival and potential genocide, as the forced relocation of and “scorched earth” policy against the Sengwer People in Kenya shows. However, the impacts of REDD in Africa are not limited to violations of individual and collective human rights. REDD is firmly on course to further entrench existing systemic and structural oppressions related to access to and control over natural resources. REDD constitutes a new offensive against the people of Africa, especially those who are already marginalized (economically, politically, culturally) such as women, small-holder farmers, pastoralists, hunter gatherers and indigenous peoples.

The No REDD in Africa Network has documented and denounced the crucial emblematic case of the forced relocation and possible ”extinction” of the Sengwer people as part of World Bank-funded REDD, which proves the genocidal potential of REDD. The Guardian’s Nafeez Ahmed reported on the “scorched earth campaign” in Cherangany Hills and how the “plight of Kenya’s indigenous Sengwer shows carbon offsets are empowering corporate recolonisation of the South.”91 The evictions of the Sengwer also confirm Friends of the Earth International’s concern that REDD could “foster an ‘armed protection’ mentality that could lead to the displacement of millions of forest-dependent people, through the police and military forces.”92

Chris Lang of REDD Monitor notes that under REDD schemes, “the rights to the use of that land could be taken away from indigenous peoples who depend on their forests for their livelihoods. Destroying livelihoods on this scale could conform to the parts (a), (b), and (c) of the definition of genocide [of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide]93.”

Gravity of human rights violations and magnitude of the repression

It is important to note the scope, diversity and gravity of the human rights violations REDD-type projects are causing. The magnitude of the repression of REDD-type projects already includes the violent eviction of tens of thousands of people. The forest carbon project in Uganda for the New Forests Company is not an aberration, but rather indicative of the scale of repression and militarization that is possible under REDD-type projects.

REDD-type projects are violating not just the individual rights of persons but also the collective rights of peoples including the right to exist as a people, and the right to self-determination enshrined in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights; as well as article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs). The articles of UNDRIPs most commonly violated by REDD-type projects are found in Appendix 1.

The right to free, prior, informed consent is one of the fundamental principles of UNDRIPs and crucial for resisting the imposition of unwanted projects. A comparative analysis of the violation of the right to free, prior, informed consent by UN-REDD is revealing. Of the sixteen countries with UN-REDD national programs, at least ten countries have violated the right to free, prior and informed consent and the right to participate of civil society and indigenous peoples in processes related to REDD. (Appendix 2)

No mandatory safeguards

There are no legal binding safeguards pertaining to REDD and the REDD safeguards of the United Nations are not in the operative section of the document. They are rather left in an annex, voluntary and toothless.94 No dispute mechanism has been established, let alone a grievance mechanism.

The UN’s REDD safeguards neither save nor guard. The voluntary market as its name suggests is even more unregulated than the mandatory market.

Undoubtedly the number, intensity and magnitude of the human rights abuses will dramatically increase once REDD enters into its implementation phase. In this regard, the timeline for implementation suggests that REDD will start up in 2020, but there is a vocal coalition that is pushing for interim implementation before 2020. Furthermore, the “bankability” of credits allows polluters to amass and stockpile credits preemptively for upcoming mandatory reductions through offsets. The voluntary market and regional or subnational markets have their own timelines and some are already implementing REDD.

REDD causes systemic and structural changes

It is important to note that REDD is not just causing grave individual and collective human rights violations, it is causing systemic and structural changes. These changes touch almost every aspect of society including land, work, production, gender, immigration, power, independence, colonialism and, of course, global warming and the environment of the continent. Here is a compilation of these changes:

• Massive land grabs which could destroy traditional land and water tenure
• Changes in labor and work such as turning peasants and indigenous peoples into peons or carbon slaves in their own lands
• Changes in production
  • Growing carbon instead of food
  • Carbon capture instead of sustenance from forests
• A new form of violence against women
• An additional driver of immigration and exodus from countryside to 
cities and industrialized countries
• A new form of underdevelopment of Africa
• A new form of colonialism, economic subjugation and impoverishment
• A new form of capital accumulation, financialization and concentration of wealth
• Undermining nation states and increasing elite, corporate and foreign power
• Changes in legal framework especially of forests, land tenure and human rights
• Greater militarization, surveillance and control of forests, land, coasts and natural resources
• Less independence and more foreign intervention
• Redrawing of geopolitical maps
• Turn Africa into a carbon dump
• Continental conversion of native ecosystems to monoculture plantations
• Make global warming worse and contribute to the incineration of Africa