The international indigenous rights organization, First People World Wide (FPWW), has been invited by the government of Botswana to help mediate the continuing negotiations regarding the removal of indigenous Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). FPWW believes in allowing indigenous people to take care of game reserves and parks, thus empowering themselves and finding means of economic self-sufficiency. "They [Basarwa] cannot be empowered by removal from the land which belongs to their grandfathers," FPWW founder Rebecca Adamson told the Mmegi newspaper of Gaborone. Adamson added that prior to agreeing to participate in negotiations, FPWW required assurances of transparency from the government and the freedom to conduct independent research into the situation. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is an ancestral home of the indigenous Basarwa, also known as the San Bushmen. The government of Botswana forcibly removed the majority of Bushmen in 2002, however, a small number, estimated at between 150–200, still remain. Since 2002 organizations such as Survival International and the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) have reported abuses perpetrated by government officials on the Basarwa; Survival International has gone so far as to accuse the government of genocide.
