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27 Nov 2017

Zambia: New Human Rights Watch report critical of commercial farming activities; says villagers displaced from their land without compensation

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A new Human Rights Watch report found that some commercial farmers in Serenje District, in Zambia’s fertile Central Province, have acquired thousands of hectares of land while ignoring laws meant to prevent forced evictions and ensure that rural residents are compensated if their land is taken. While some farms have started operations without evicting residents, others have fired up their bulldozers and forcibly evicted residents whose families had farmed the land for generations. Human Rights Watch investigated six commercial farms in Serenje district, ranging in size from 150 hectares to more than 5,000 hectares of land. Five of the farms are within Luombwa farm block and one is in the Nansanga farm block. These farms cover a broad spectrum from a corporate investor (Silverlands Zambia Limited) to family-run farms, registered as companies with the government, whose owners live on the farm and directly participate in the work. Several commercial farmers told Human Rights Watch they had expected the government to remove people living on the farm plots they acquired. Instead, they said they had to decide how to deal with the families they found on the land, whom they regarded as “squatters” with no legitimate rights to the land, even those whose families had been there for generations. Several government officials acknowledged problems with regulation of commercial agriculture and the existence of abuses, but did not take any responsibility for preventing or addressing them. Most officials pointed fingers at other agencies, sending the message that they didn’t consider protection of rural residents to be their job.