logging over
livelihoods
cameroonian villagers sue french forest
company
friends of the earth
france
© frédéric
castell, foe france
"We need money to clear the plantation
again, and then we need to wait four years
until the cocoa starts to produce again. I
have four children, and am also responsible
for the seven children of my unmarried
sisters."
Jean-Jacques Ngbwa Abondo, a
Cameroonian plaintiff in the lawsuit
against French multinational Rougier, in a
27 March 2002 article in Le Monde
In the Miatta region of Cameroon , 300
kilometers from the capital city of Yaoundé
, once lush village plantations of cocoa,
mandarin and other fruit trees have been
crushed under the wheels of heavy
machinery. Gutted red dirt roads lead
deeper into the forest, but there are only
gashes where the most beautiful and
valuable tree species - sipo, iroko,
mahogany, sapelli - stood before being
illegally chopped down and dragged off for
export. This means that villagers are not
only deprived of income from their
plantations, but they are also left with
damaged biodiversity in the surrounding
area. According to local planters, the
destruction is the work of the Cameroonian
Forest Corporation (SFID), which has been
illegally exploiting timber in the forests
surrounding the village since the late
1990s. In 2002, Friends of the Earth France
and seven Cameroonian villagers launched a
civil action
According to local planters, the
destruction is the work of the Cameroonian
Forest Corporation (SFID), which has been
illegally exploiting timber in the forests
surrounding the village since the late
1990s. In 2002, Friends of the Earth France
and seven Cameroonian villagers launched a
civil action lawsuit against SFID and its
parent firm in France, SA Rougier, claiming
that the French company was largely
responsible for the unlawful activities of
its Cameroonian subsidiary, including
property destruction, forgery, stolen goods
and corruption.
The complaint was a precedent in French
courts in the fight against overseas
corporate impunity. Although criminal law
is applicable to any crime committed by a
French citizen outside French territory,
the condition of double incrimination means
that the offence must also be punished in
the country where it was made. Although the
plaintiffs produced evidence that a local
sentence was not feasible due to the
general climate of corruption in Cameroon ,
the court deemed this unacceptable.
Moreover, French law stipulates that
offences committed abroad are under the
jurisdiction of the public prosecutor, who
can consider that an act is not
sufficiently serious to justify the
beginning of legal proceedings. These
points led to the case being thrown out of
French courts at the end of 2002, and then
again in early 2004 following an
appeal.
According to Friends of the Earth
France, the decision highlights how
flagrantly ill-suited French law is to the
challenges and realities of economic
globalization, and adds urgency to their
call for a legally-binding convention for
transnational corporations. In the
meantime, they and the Cameroonian
villagers are planning another appeal, this
time to the French Supreme Court, in the
hopes of overturning the decision.
more information:
Friends of the Earth Cameroon :
www.africa-environment.org/ced
Friends of the Earth France :
www.amisdelaterre.org
