Litigation & Regional Mechanisms Program – Banjul
22 October 2025
Committee for Justice (CFJ) took part in a high-level side event held on 22 October 2025 in Press Room No. 3 at the International Conference Center in Banjul, on the margins of the 85th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), under the title:
“Enforced Disappearances in the Context of the Defence of Land, Natural Resources, and the Environment.”
The event brought together representatives of the African Commission, UN mechanisms, and African civil society organisations working to protect human rights defenders – in particular those defending land, the environment and community rights in the face of extractive projects and harmful resource policies.
The discussion was moderated by Aua Baldé, member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), and featured the following speakers:
- Commissioner Idrissa Sow – Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Chair of the Working Group on the Death Penalty, Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings and Enforced Disappearances in Africa;
- Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez – Member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances;
- Christopher Pio – Team Leader, Uganda Oil Refinery Residents Association;
- Tinomuda Shoko – Litigation Manager, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR);
- Ahmed Mefreh – Executive Director, Committee for Justice (CFJ);
- Álvaro Gómez del Valle – Senior Advocacy Leader, Front Line Defenders.
Speakers examined how enforced disappearance is used as a tool to silence land and environmental defenders and communities resisting abusive investment, extraction and land-use projects. They highlighted emblematic situations from East Africa, as well as the challenges faced by defenders and communities in North Africa and the Sahel, and the obstacles victims’ families encounter in their search for truth, justice and reparation.
In his intervention, CFJ’s representative outlined patterns of targeting economic, social and environmental rights defenders in the region, including enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and judicial harassment used to suppress community resistance.
He stressed the intrinsic link between protecting defenders, safeguarding natural resources and the environment, and upholding the rights of future generations.
The side event was co-organised by:
- Committee for Justice (CFJ);
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR);
- DefendDefenders;
- Front Line Defenders;
- Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR);
- with the support of the UN Human Rights Council Special Procedures and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Participants also discussed ways to improve reporting of land- and environment-related enforced disappearance cases to the WGEID and ACHPR mechanisms, the need to strengthen documentation methodologies that prioritise the safety of victims and witnesses, and the importance of robust protection measures for defenders who face direct threats because of their work.
Committee for Justice underlines that this event forms part of broader efforts to strengthen complementarity between African Union and United Nations mechanisms, in line with the Addis Ababa Road Map, in order to advance accountability and secure truth and justice for victims of enforced disappearance and their families – especially in cases linked to the defence of land, natural resources, the environment and community rights across Africa.
