PRESS RELEASE
Edéa, 12 August 2024. SOCAPALM, a subsidiary of Socfin, must immediately cease replanting operations at Edea 1, in Cameroon.
We, the members of the Informal Alliance against Industrial Oil Palm Plantations, our partners and all the women living in the vicinity of agro-industries in Cameroon and elsewhere, urge Socapalm to immediately stop replanting oil palm plantations in the vicinity of the houses and graves of the communities living in Apouh à Ngog, which has been going on since Wednesday 08 August 2024. The planting of tens of thousands of hectares of palm trees in front of the yards of these local residents is a serious attack on the food sovereignty of the families in the village and on the dignity of the women of Apouh à Ngog, in the Edéa 1 district of Cameroon.
Socapalm, a company owned by Socfin (from the Bollore Group of France and the Hubert Fabri family of Luxembourg), controls nearly 60,000 hectares of land in Cameroon.
Once again, this action by SOCAPALM shows the company's greed and total disrespect for the local communities and families who have given up their vital resources (land, forests, water, air) to set up the plantation.
Communities have long been demanding that Socapalm stop the re-planting that encroaches on their village. However, the company still refuses to listen to the communities' demands.
These people, particularly the women of the village, have drawn the attention of decision-makers to this situation. They have done so in a letter to the President of the Republic of Cameroon, in various petitions, in meetings with senior officials of the Ministries for the Promotion of Women and the Family and for Social Affairs in Cameroon, in an open letter to the Managing Director of SOCAPLM, and in a petition to the National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms in Cameroon.
In numerous letters, local residents state that: “If they do not stop these operations, the women and our families who live close to Socapalm in Edéa will have to endure another 50 years of suffering, abuse, rape, theft, hunger, frustration and violation of our rights, our privacy and our dignity. This would corner our whole community into living in a fundamentally painful, unjust, miserable and unbearable way.”
We were alerted that the company is ignoring community efforts to stop the continued devastation of community lands, and started replanting operations. Socapalm is turning a deaf ear to the community demands.
We demand that SOCAPALM immediately halt the replanting operations and hand over the vital space to the community, to preserve their rights to the land to produce food and feed their families with dignity.
Signatories:
- Informal Alliance against Industrial Oil Palm Plantations
(formed by groups and activists from Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Nigeria, DRC, Congo R, Gabon and Uganda)
- Association of Women Neighbors of Agro-Industries in Cameroon