The African Bio-Cultural Rights Programme
The overall purpose of the African Bio-Cultural Rights Programme is to support IPLCs in securing their
rights over their territories, natural resources and cultures. The programme seeks to have two
significant impacts. These are:
To empower African IPLCs with the necessary tools to secure rights to their common property
resources and thereby act as a model for other communities within and beyond Africa.
To serve as a lobbying, advocacy and information tool for African Governments which are in the
process of developing and implementing domestic law and policy with regards to common
property rights relating to genetic resources and traditional knowledge.
The African Bio-Cultural Rights Programme is composed of two initiatives which are interconnected
in many of their objectives:
The African BCP Initiative
The African Bio-Cultural Rights Capacity Development Initiative
The design of such a programme emerged from a meeting of representatives of African IPLCs and
CBOs on BCPs, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2010. The meeting
highlighted the potential of BCPs to be used by communities in their attempts to establish rights over
their lands, resources and knowledge. The meeting recommended continuing and expanding the
African work on BCPs and disseminating comprehensive information about BCP development and
implementation by:
Coordinating existing community and CBO networks to create a critical mass of communities
developing BCPs that will prompt governments to recognise and engage with such mechanisms.
Creating an accessible platform of communication that will to allow the sharing of experiences
and lessons learnt from Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.
Developing materials on BCPs and models of best practice in order to assist communities and
supporting NGOs and CBOs.
Building legal capacity and expertise at grassroots level.
Setting up a team of resource people to facilitate and coordinate the development of a legal
capacity and training programme for communities and CBO representatives and environmental
law practitioners.
The African and Asian Regional Bio-Cultural Community Protocol Initiatives
The African and Asian Regional Bio-Cultural Community Protocol Initiative will be running
concurrently in 2011 and 2012. The lessons learnt from the experiences in Asia and Africa will be
shared between the two regions contributing to the development of comprehensive materials and
models of best practice on BCPs. It is hoped that peer to peer learning exchanges between CBOs,
NGOs and lawyers involved in the Initiatives will also occur.
3. Objectives of the Meeting
Pre-identified CBO and community representatives from South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin and environmental legal practitioners from South Africa, Namibia,
Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as well as a number of
experts in community development took part in the meeting and completed the following
objectives:
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