Prince Harry played the role of “passionate advocate for environmental conservation” during his whirlwind trip to New York City this week, where he sat on stage with Katie Couric and participated in a panel discussion for African Parks, one of the signature nonprofits in his philanthropic portfolio.
But Survival International, a leading human rights group, slammed both Harry and African Parks for failing to address a litany of alleged “horrific” abuses committed by African Parks rangers against Indigenous people in a national park in the Republic of Congo, which the nonprofit manages.
After Harry joined the board of directors for African Parks in 2023, an investigative Daily Mail news report in the January alleged that local Baka people in the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Congo basin had been the victims of rape, torture and countless other “atrocities.” Following the report, Survival International called on the Duke of Sussex to resign from African Parks and said it had alerted him to the alleged abuses the year before.
Harry didn’t resign, and Caroline Pearce, the executive director for Survival International, said that concerns about the alleged abuses “have not been resolved,” while African Parks has yet to make public the results of an internal investigation it vowed to undertake.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 24: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex speaks onstage during Day 2 of the Clinton Global Initiative 2024 Annual Meeting at New York Hilton Midtown on September 24, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative)
Pearce expressed dismay over the “shocking failure” of Harry and African Parks to address the alleged abuses during Monday’s panel discussion, which took place as part New York Climate Week. The discussion was moderated by Couric and featured African Parks CEO Peter Fearnhead.
Information about the panel discussion came from a glowing press release issued by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s office, which praised African Parks’ “transformative” work in Africa and claimed that the organization had enjoyed “measurable successes in combating climate change, protecting vital ecosystems, and enhancing local livelihoods.”
To Pearce, these remarks by Harry’s office, and his participation in the panel discussion, demonstrated a “shocking failure to grasp the catastrophic nature and extent of the problems with African Parks’ colonial and racist approach to conservation,” as she said in a statement to this news organization. The remarks also showed that “neither the Duke of Sussex nor African Parks understand the need to question African Parks’ vision and the brutal ‘fortress conservation’ approach,” Pearce said.
“While they seem to celebrate ‘conservation’ in New York, the lives of Indigenous people in African Parks’ ‘protected areas’ are being devastated by the violence brought by its rangers: people have been raped, abused and tortured,” Pearce said.
A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on why he and African Parks didn’t appear to address the alleged abuses during the panel discussion. The spokesperson also didn’t respond to criticism about their embrace of “fortress …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
