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By Reynaldo A. Morales

Indigenous Mbororo Peoples, nomad pastoralists practicing transhumance from time immemorial, remain in a legal limbo, continually displaced under jurisdictional movement in the regions of West and Central Africa. With thousands of deaths related to farmer-herder skirmishes recorded in the past two decades, the realities of climate change and the resulting massive loss of biodiversity exacerbate major security and economic challenges on the ground. 

For the past 40 years, after the eviction of around 6,000 Batwa people from Kahuzi Biega National Park (PNKB), the Batwa people have suffered extreme poverty and wrongful treatment at the hands of PNKB. Since, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has made no attempt to find the community similar lands, and when the Batwa do try to regain lands in the park or access to traditional resources, park officials have responded with undue force, arresting and even killing those who would not back down.

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