As the United Nations (UN), prepares to mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples tomorrow, August 9, the rights of the world’s indigenous peoples are now under greater threat from new policies being promoted by the World Bank, the international financial institution that provides funding for projects in developing countries. The Bank has recently unveiled a new set of…
Although no reliable census exists, it is estimated that there are between 500-700,000 indigenous people in the Congo Basin who are divided into more than 26 distinct ethnic groups with differing customs and languages. Collectively referred to as “Pygmies”, such groups are to varying degrees characterised by a high level of forest dependency and may cover significant areas in order…
Jeanne Noah, a Bagyeli leader from Cameroon, relates how her community’s ancestral forest is threatened by a large scale rubber production project. On top of this, Jeanne explains, neighbouring Bantu communities claim as their own the little forest area which is not already under the company’s control. As the Bagyeli’s access to the forest, their home and sustenance, is increasingly…
Indigenous, hunter-gatherer peoples of the Congo Basin have a unique perception of the use of land. Their systems aim at ensuring abundance of forest resources and equal distribution among the people living in those forests. Dr. Jerome Lewis, Lecturer in Anthropology at UCL, talks about the need to take this vision into account to secure indigenous peoples’ right to the…
New research from RFUK, Congolese NGO Forum pour la Gouvernance et les Droits de l’Homme (FGDH) and other indigenous peoples organisations shows that forest communities and indigenous peoples in the Congo Basin already believe they are experiencing the impacts of climate change. Participatory research carried out with local communities in the remote northern province of Likouala, used a number of…
RFUK and MEFP, in collaboration with film maker Luis Leitao, have launched a new film on how the BaAka in the Central African rainforests are making their voices heard through participatory mapping. In order to raise awareness of the problems faced by indigenous forest communities in the Congo Basin, and the role that participatory mapping can play in resolving these,…
The Central African Republic (CAR) ratified the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention No. 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples in August 2010, becoming the first African country to adopt the Convention. This historic development for indigenous peoples in the country and on the continent places an obligation on the CAR Government to ensure that national laws and policies are coherent…
