Grievance and remedy in protected areas: what a new scoping study told negotiators in Nairobi

When a community is harmed in the name of conservation, where can it seek remedy? And when a community succeeds in bringing a case, does the decision actually change anything on the ground?

Those two questions framed a side event held on 31 July 2026 at the UN Environment Programme headquarters in Nairobi, during the twenty-eighth meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-28).

Professor Elisa Marchi, Director of the Human Rights Practice Program at the University of Arizona and Director of the Indigenous Peoples Rights and Protected Areas Initiative, presented findings from a scoping study on grievance and redress mechanisms in and around protected areas. The study was led by IUCN, funded by the German government through GIZ, and carried out in collaboration with the University of Arizona's Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. Her central conclusion was that the international standards for effective remedy already exist; what is missing is their implementation.

International human rights law already provides standards against which grievance and redress mechanisms can be assessed. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ILO Convention No. 169 and the right to an effective remedy each set out what an accessible, legitimate and effective process should look like. The research found a significant gap between those standards and what communities actually encounter.

Communities that obtain landmark legal decisions may still wait years for anything to follow. The Ogiek case before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Kaliña and Lokono Peoples case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights both illustrate the point: a remedy that exists only on paper does not necessarily deliver justice in practice. In the Ogiek case, the African Court found on the merits in 2017 and issued a reparations judgment in 2022; in December 2025 it issued its first-ever compliance decision, holding that Kenya had implemented neither.

The study also found that having more mechanisms does not automatically produce more accountability. In some protected areas, several mechanisms operate alongside one another with no clear coordination, no referral pathways between them and no capacity to provide meaningful redress. At Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the research identified six separate grievance mechanisms running simultaneously, while serious concerns about access to effective remedy remained unresolved.

Accountability also extends beyond any single institution. States remain the primary duty-bearers under international human rights law, but donors, conservation organizations, development banks, certification bodies and other actors all hold leverage that can be used to prevent harm and to strengthen accountability where harm has occurred.

Perhaps the most important finding was that effective grievance mechanisms cannot be separated from recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their lands, territories, resources and governance systems. Recognition of those rights helps prevent future conflicts, and it also contributes to redress for past harms — forced evictions, dispossession, and protected areas established without the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples concerned. Grievance and redress mechanisms therefore need to do two things at once: respond to new complaints, and contribute to meaningful processes of redress and reconciliation for harm that has already happened.

Why this matters for the Global Biodiversity Framework

The timing mattered. Governments and other actors were in Nairobi to advance the implementation and monitoring of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and access to justice is a component of the Framework’s Target 22, which commits Parties to ensuring participation in decision-making and access to justice and information for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The SBSTTA-28 discussions on monitoring and on protected and conserved areas will help shape how progress against that commitment is assessed as Parties move toward the first global review of collective progress at COP17 in Yerevan.

The message from the side event was direct: if access to remedy and justice is not adequately monitored, serious gaps in the implementation of the Framework’s human rights commitments will simply remain invisible.

Who was in the room

The event brought together Indigenous rights-holders, practitioners, conservation organizations and funders. Speakers included Peter Kitelo, Executive Director of the Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project; Maurizio Ferrari, Senior Policy Adviser at Forest Peoples Programme; Lucy Mulenkei, Co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity; Ngimbi Daniel Mabengo of the Alliance Nationale d’Appui et de Promotion des Aires et Territoires du Patrimoine Autochtones en RDC; and Cristina Eghenter, Global Governance Senior Expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Opening contributions came from Thierry Lefebvre, Senior Programme Manager for Diverse and Equitable Stewardship at IUCN; Jessica Campese of IUCN’s Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy; Tobias Cabani, Advisor with GIZ’s Sector Programme Biodiversity–Environment–Oceans; and Jennifer Tauli Corpuz of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity. The discussion covered both the shortcomings of existing mechanisms and the openings for collaboration and innovation, including mechanisms that are led by, accessible to and trusted by Indigenous Peoples themselves.

The event was co-hosted by IUCN, the ICCA Consortium, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, Forest Peoples Programme, the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, GIZ and the European Union.

From Nairobi to COP17

The Nairobi discussion was not an endpoint. It pointed to a broader conversation about what actually makes grievance and redress mechanisms work in protected and conserved areas, particularly given continuing human rights concerns associated with conservation.

The work builds on the Indigenous Peoples Rights and Protected Areas Initiative, including its database documenting allegations of human rights violations affecting Indigenous Peoples in protected and conserved areas worldwide. By assembling cases across countries and regions, the database makes it possible to identify recurring patterns of violation and accountability gaps, and provides an evidence base for research and advocacy on rights-based conservation.

The findings presented in Nairobi reinforce a lesson running through that work: effective conservation cannot be separated from accountability. Where violations occur, affected Indigenous Peoples need mechanisms capable not simply of receiving complaints, but of delivering meaningful remedy and contributing to guarantees of non-repetition. That case will continue to be made on the road to COP17 — for grievance, redress and access to effective remedy to be treated not as a technical footnote to biodiversity policy, but as a measure of whether the Global Biodiversity Framework’s commitments to Indigenous Peoples are being fulfilled.

RESOURCES

Read the primary sources

Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, final text — Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, decision 15/4, adopted 19 December 2022. Target 22 is the access-to-justice commitment discussed above. cbd.int/article/cop15-final-text-kunming-montreal-gbf-221222

SBSTTA-28 meeting page and official documents — Convention on Biological Diversity, Nairobi, 27 July – 1 August 2026. Agenda items on monitoring and on protected and conserved areas are the relevant ones. cbd.int/meetings/SBSTTA-28

African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v. Republic of Kenya — Application No. 006/2012 (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights). Judgment on the merits, 26 May 2017; judgment on reparations, 23 June 2022; compliance decision, 4 December 2025. 

Kaliña and Lokono Peoples v. Suriname — Merits, Reparations and Costs, Series C No. 309 (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 25 November 2015). The judgment addresses nature reserves established on Indigenous territory without consent. Full text in English: corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_309_ing.pdf

UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights — Endorsed by the Human Rights Council, 2011. Principle 31 sets the effectiveness criteria against which non-judicial grievance mechanisms are assessed. 

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/Guidin…

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and ILO Convention No. 169 (1989) 

UNEP Core Human Rights Principles for Private Conservation Organizations and Funders

   https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/core-human-rights-principles…

Start here if this is new to you

ICCA Consortium commentary on the Global Biodiversity Framework — Explains what the rights language in Targets 21 and 22 does and does not commit Parties to. iccaconsortium.org

IPLP Protected Areas and Indigenous Peoples Rights Initiates 

What is still open

The study identifies the implementation gap but does not resolve it. Three questions in particular remain unsettled. First, nobody has established what makes a grievance mechanism trusted rather than merely available — the Kahuzi-Biega finding suggests that mechanism-counting is the wrong measure, but there is no agreed alternative. Second, the leverage held by donors, development banks and certification bodies is widely acknowledged and rarely exercised; what would trigger its use is an open question of both law and practice. Third, and most consequentially for the Framework, there is as yet no agreed indicator for monitoring access to justice under Target 22 — which means that a commitment Parties have made can be reported against without ever being tested.

If you are studying with us

This is directly relevant to anyone working on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, environmental governance or accountability mechanisms. The scoping study is a worked example of a method students use in the program: taking an established international standard, examining what happens to it at implementation, and documenting the gap in a form that can be put in front of a treaty body or a negotiation. Students looking for a capstone or portfolio project could take a single protected area, map the grievance mechanisms available to communities there against the Guiding Principles’ effectiveness criteria, and identify where the referral pathways break down. Contact your faculty adviser if you want to develop this.

Take part

The program’s graduate certificates and fully online MA in Human Rights Practice are built for people already working on these questions. To hear first about future sessions and publications on rights-based conservation, join our mailing list —https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfg_pNXgwcOxCfxj3xqocwdjjqmfOUPQhHpWBJFUVIteUPdjw/viewform