An Unfolding Human Rights Crisis: the Extraction of Heavy Sands and the Impact on Human and Environmental Rights in Varela, Guinea-Bissau

Executive Summary

The pursuit of heavy sands extraction in the region of Varela-Nhiquim is widely perceived as posing serious threats to the continued existence of the Felupe people, an indigenous population in the North of Guinea-Bissau. Despite broad opposition of communities directly affected over more than a decade, the government has advanced the project, most recently with a new corporate entity. On April 18 (2025), a group of women protested the extraction of heavy sands in Nhiquim and someone set fire to the sand extraction infrastructure. Authorities responded by arresting five community leaders and taking them to a detention center in the capital, despite evidence that most of them had not participated in any acts of vandalism. As reported widely in the national media, the government also sent a detachment of security forces to the region and promised that as many as one hundred troops would be relocated to Varela. The situation in the communities now is tense.

In May, researchers and supervisors from The University Network for Human Rights with researchers from Justiça Global, a Brazil-based human rights organization, human rights expert, Prof. Aua Baldé, and four rights activists from Guinea-Bissau visited the villages of Nhiquim, Hassuka, Madina and Yale. The research group sought to document the impact of heavy sands extraction in these communities and the related deprivation of liberty of five leaders following protests and an arson attack at a heavy sands extraction site. We attest now 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. 

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