Legal System of Forest Protection in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Criminal Anthropology: Rights in Rights

Abstract

The protection of the environment in general and that of the forests in particular is one of the concerns of the States. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of these countries. To do so and accompanied by some international financial organizations, the Democratic Republic of Congo has implemented a binding code governing the forestry sector. 20 years after its promulgation, and designed to seek the well-being of its entire population, this work shows that multiple obstacles are blocking its expansion. With the objective of detecting the suffering and its explanatory factors resulting from the law protecting Congolese forests, we used the qualitative approach materialized during the production of field data by the documentary technique and the interview technique. The content analysis served us in the counting and the thematic analysis in the processing of the data from which we arrived at an understanding according to which real obstacles involve the state actors responsible for applying this code but also non-state actors such as customary chiefs, rural populations. Obstacles that concretely translate into different forms of psychic traumas that manifest themselves in the economic and environmental crimes that some of these actors have maintained, having woven complex networks that this field research carried out in the Haut-Katanga Province attempts to identify.