Investigation shows Socfin/Bolloré plantations harm communities in Africa and Asia

For decades, communities neighbouring the Socfin group's plantations worldwide have railed against the company's abusive practices, which range from land grabs to sexual violence. Now their complaints have been vindicated by a surprising source: Socfin's own paid consultants, who have concluded that most of the complaints are at least partially founded, and that the vast majority of the abuses are the responsibility of the corporation.

Protest against SOCFIN in Cameroon © ReAct Transnational

The Earthworm Foundation has just finished a two-year investigation into 139 complaints levelled by affected communities against the Socfin group's oil palm and rubber plantations in Asia and Africa. Socfin is a large conglomerate co-owned by two wealthy European families: the Fabris of Belgium and the Bollorés of France. In operation for more than 100 years, Socfin today controls 372,000 hectares of farmland in 10 countries, where it faces a long history of resistance from impacted communities. Earthworm, a Swiss-based consultancy organisation that helps companies meet social and environmental standards, was hired by Socfin to conduct this investigation.

The issues that Earthworm looked into ranged from coerced sex and labour violations on Socfin’s farms to land grabbing, forced evictions, restriction of villagers’ movement, destruction of sacred sites and the pollution of people's drinking water. The investigation took them to 12 plantations in Cambodia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, accounting for 87% of Socfin’s land holdings.¹ Some of these are part of global supply chains for multinational corporations like Nestlé and Goodyear. ²

Their findings are scathing: 59% of the communities' grievances were confirmed as "founded" or "partially founded", the bulk of them deemed to be the company’s own responsibility. A small fraction (30%) were dismissed as "unfounded". Overall, this means that the company itself has been forced to admit that these historical grievances, which some communities have been suffering for more than 10 or 20 years, are valid and true.

The day-to-day abuses around the plantations take many forms. Land problems range from legal infringements or forced evictions to unpaid compensation or historic injustices embedded in land titles or leases. Violence against women involves harassment by male plantation workers, extortion of sexual favours for work or simply to pass through the plantation, and even rape of minors.

These are structural and widespread problems. Of the 12 plantations visited, Earthworm confirmed labour violations and negative impacts on peoples’ livelihoods in nine of them, land conflicts and environmental degradation at eight of them, gender-based violence by plantation personnel at seven of them, and destruction of sacred sites at four of them.

“In other words,” Emmanuel Elong of the National Synergy of Peasants and Residents of Cameroon puts it, “the data confirm that for us, communities on the ground, Socfin’s production system is one of extraction.”

This is a damning indictment of one of the world's oldest and largest plantation companies – set up during colonial times and still operating in a colonial manner. Socfin’s key shareholder, the Bolloré group, and financiers are complicit, as they have benefited financially or helped fund the company’s activities that have contributed to these harms. These include the International Financial Corporation (a World Bank Group member), banks like BNP Paribas or UBS, and some host country governments. Even Bolloré’s own shareholders, like the Norwegian Pension Fund, have raised red flags about the group’s connection to these practices. ³

"Women suffer the most from these plantations," said Aminata Finde Massaquoi of the Women's Network Against Rural Plantations Injustice in Sierra Leone. "In Malen, where Socfin operates, women have lost their own land which gave them a regular source of food and income, and access to the woods where they got their medicine."

Many of these problems go back decades. Communities, journalists and civil society organisations who have denounced them in the past have faced arrests, lawsuits and harassment. As a result, many have no faith in the company’s willingness to fix these problems on its own.

A recent examination of how Earthworm Foundation operates raises critical questions about its degree of independence from companies like Socfin. ⁴ In response to the findings, Socfin has designed its own “action plans” to resolve the problems Earthworm identified, but without communities’ input or control. This amounts to a blueprint for persistent unaccountability and further harm.

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