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The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme is an innovative, collaborative and scalable initiative developed by the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and funded by the European Commission with co-funding from the French Facility for Global Environment and the French Development Agency.

The seven-year SWM Programme aims to conserve wildlife and protect ecosystems, while improving the living conditions and food security of the people who depend on these resources. Supporting national partners in their development and implementation of appropriate legal frameworks is critical to achieving these objectives. It has field operations in 15 countries, namely Botswana, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Gabon, Guyana, Madagascar, Mali, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

To facilitate access to legal documents and knowledge, the SWM Programme has created an online platform the Legal-Hub, which is available in English and French. The Legal Hub contains legal and regulatory texts as well as an overview of the relevant legal regimes that relate to wild meat and wildlife management. It is designed to assist research, policy and legal development at national level. To achieve this, it organizes and presents legal information in a coherent manner to best serve the needs of the various users.

The Legal Hub is a valuable resource to make sense of the often incomplete or incoherent body of law that govern the various sectors along the wildlife value chain. Such complexity is even more pronounced in those countries where customary law also regulates natural resource management and where local conflicts are managed through informal justice systems.

At present, the Legal Hub covers six countries (Congo, Gabon, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal and Zimbabwe) and is being expanded in 2022 to include DRC, Chad, Egypt, Guyana, Sudan and Suriname. Most country page of the Legal Hub is currently structured around five main sections:

• an historical and political background;
• a legal database organized by sector, where a user can access and download all the relevant national policies, laws and regulations;
• a diagnostic of the statutory law, which provides summaries of sector-specific legislation and regulations;
• an overview of the level of domestication of ratified international instruments; and
• a description of relevant national institutions and their roles.

By facilitating public access to legal texts and their analysis across sectors, the Legal Hub will increase public awareness and encourage informed and participative law reform processes. This will help prevent, detect and respond to the multiple challenges of sustainable wildlife management along the relevant supply chains, in an appropriate and cross-sectoral manner.

The SWM Programme is being implemented by a dynamic consortium of four partners with expertise in wildlife conservation and food security:

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
• French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD)
• Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

For more information, please contact [email protected]  

Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images for FAO, CIFOR, CIRAD, WCS