The Extraction of Heavy Sands and the Impact on Human and Environmental Rights in Varela, Guinea-Bissau

Heavy sands in Nhiquim, May 2025

During the month of January (2025), the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) and Justiça Global (JG) offered three weeks of training on Human Rights and International Mechanisms. The program supported by UNDP-Guinea-Bissau offered a second part that included training in field research, human rights documentation, and the elaboration of report and advocacy campaigns concerning a situation of rights abuse in Guinea-Bissau. In March 2025, the group decided to examine the impact of heavy sand extraction in the Cacheu region.

Six administrative sectors are part of the Cacheu region, in the north of Guinea-Bissau bordering Senegal. This geographical location gives the area a particular geopolitical relevance in terms of the exploration and exploitation of natural resources, climate change, and the movement of cross-border communities with cultural, ethnic and spiritual ties, such as the Felupe people. This cross-border context poses specific challenges to the protection of human rights, in particular regarding respect for collective land rights and the preservation of sacred sites.

Between the months of March and April, UNHR selected four Bissau-Guinean activists who were part of the research and documentation teams. A group of four university students from the U.S. assisted in the research, traveling to Lisbon to work on background research and the legal framework to be considered. During the month of May 2025, three research teams worked in Varela conducting interviews and collecting data from five villages to report on heavy sand extraction in the region and its impact on human rights and the environment as well as the related deprivation of liberty of five leaders following protests and an arson attack at a heavy sands extraction site in Nhiquim.

In the forthcoming report An Unfolding Human Rights Crisis: the Extraction of Heavy Sands and the Impact on Human and Environmental Rights in Varela, Guinea-Bissau, we attest to serious threats posed by the pursuit of heavy sands extraction in the region of Varela to the continued livelihood of the Felupe and other peoples.