RSPO certificate for Socfin in Sierra Leone despite blatant land conflict’ 18 March 2022

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified the Socfin subsidiary in Sierra Leone in January 2022, in spite of numerous land conflicts, violence against human rights defenders and grievances on pollution and other forms of environmental harm from affected communities. This certification is next in line of a number of highly controversial certifications of the SOCFIN group in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast. RSPO is totally biased in favor of the industry and is not fit for purpose to guarantee sustainability and respect for human rights in palm oil supply chains. The RSPO [1] consultation process was riddled with missteps. Relevant stakeholders, including affected landowners, were not consulted. A crucial government report that orders revocation of the principal lease and a participative process to solve the current land disputes was rejected as evidence. The audits were not independent from the company and a safe space for consultation was not provided despite the huge risks of reprisals for people.

Since 2011, this subsidiary (SAC) of the multinational company SOCFIN has acquired more than 18,000 hectares of land for an industrial palm oil plantation in the Malen Chiefdom (Pujehun district, Southern Sierra Leone). From the beginning, communities have denounced this acquisition as pure land grabbing which was done without their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). Since then, a land conflict has raged between SOCFIN, the local authorities and the communities. Although, under local and international pressure and with the aim of obtaining their labels, SAC has improved some practices, the land conflict is still not resolved nor the negative impacts on local communities. A peace building project by UNDP is still running, proving that the conflict still needs to be addressed. The communities of Malen learned in September 2020 that auditors were coming for a certification audit. During the consultation process, local communities and numerous civil society organizations provided the auditors from the certification body, SCS Global Services (SCS), with evidence that SOCFIN’s practices go against the principles and criteria of the RSPO.

… This criminalization has been regularly denounced by local civil society as well as international human rights organizations and UN experts. “How can auditors certify a palm oil plantation affecting more than 32,000 people, in less than 10 days and by consulting only hand-picked representatives for a few hours ?” asks Aminata Fabba, one of the community spokespersons from MALOA.She recently received the Front Line Defenders Awardin late December 2021, for continuing her fight for her land occupied by SOCFIN despite the pressures, intimidation and physical and judicial attacks she has endured. "There was a clear conflict of interest at play when the SCS auditors were provided with vehicle and translator by the company to carry out their independent duty," said Member of Parliament Shiaka Sama, advisor and former spokesman of MALOA.