1. Introduction and Overview
On the 11th and 12th of April 2011, Natural Justice, in partnership with the Access and Benefit Sharing
Capacity Development Initiative for Africa (ABS Initiative), the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and
Organisational Development (CIKOD) and ETC-COMPAS: Comparing and Supporting Endogenous
Development, hosted and facilitated the inception meeting of the African Bio-Cultural Community
Protocol Initiative (African BCP Initiative) in Cape Town, South Africa. The meeting was supported by
the Shuttleworth Foundation, the ABS Initiative, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa
(OSISA), the Henrich Böll Foundation and The Christensen Fund (TCF).
This first meeting of the African BCP Initiative brought together more than thirty seven enthusiastic
delegates, representing indigenous communities, community-based organisations (CBOs), nongovernmental organisations and foundations, from ten African countries. Over the two days of the
meeting, participants exchanged views and valuable experiences on how to develop BCPs with
consideration to local contexts while sharing some of the challenges they face and aim to address
through the development of such protocols.
Participants also developed roadmaps that encapsulated their vision, needs, and goals and
reflected on how they could work collectively and learn from each other. Based on this work, a
common programme of work will be developed with the aim of advancing (i) the use of BCPs to
secure the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) over their communally
managed resources and traditional knowledge and (ii) the legal recognition of BCPs within national
and international laws.
2. Background of the Meeting
The African Bio-Cultural Community Protocol Initiative
The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits
Arising from their Utilization (Nagoya Protocol), which was recently adopted at the 10th Conference
of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in October 2010 included ‘community
protocols’ within its text (Article 12.1, 12.3 (a) and Article 22. 6 (i)). The Nagoya Protocol requires
States, which are Parties to the CBD, to recognise the customary laws and community protocols of
IPLCs that govern the access and use of the genetic resources and the associated traditional
knowledge of these IPLCs. Such recognition of customary laws and community protocols, referred
also as BCPs, is unprecedented in international treaty law and is a significant achievement towards
legal pluralism and acknowledgement of community rights to their territories and cultures. However
securing the rights of IPLCs in the Nagoya Protocol and other relevant international laws and
conventions requires the effective development and implementation of BCPs by communities as
well as their concomitant recognition in domestic legislation.
The African BCP Initiative operates under the umbrella of the African Bio-Cultural Rights Programme,
which is described in more detail below. It is designed to support and nurture the development and
implementation of BCPS by IPLCs in selected pilot and peer learning countries (South Africa, Kenya,
Ghana, Namibia, Ethiopia, Benin and Burkina Faso) while working systematically towards the legal
recognition of BCPs within national laws.
The project will encourage the development of partnerships between the various stakeholders
involved and provide them with the relevant legal and technical capacity to develop their BCPs
and advocate for legal recognition of these BCPs in national laws and policies.
A broad range of stakeholders, such as CBOs, NGOs, IPLCs from other African countries and
governments, concerned with implementing the Nagoya Protocol, will also be involved and
engaged in peer-learning activities.
2