By Veronique Wanyema Saleh, Coordinator of Femmes Pymees
In the heart of South Kivu, a region rich in mineral wealth, a program jointly launched by Cultural Survival and Femmes Pymees en Action (Pygmy Women in Action), Radio Kivu FM, Congo, has been empowering Indigenous Pygmy communities to reclaim their rights and protect their ancestral lands from mining activities.
The Union of Indigenous Pygmy Women for Integral Development aim to contribute to the improvement of the socioeconomic living conditions of disadvantaged people, particularly Indigenous Pygmy women and girls, youth, and children, through the following pillars: fighting human discrimination and strengthening leadership and entrepreneurship among Indigenous women and youth; promoting respect for human rights, peaceful coexistence, public and reproductive health, as well as peace building; and preserving nature conservation and environmental protectio
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.
The Batwa Nyindu of the Mwenga territory in South Kivu fear that dominant languages are steadily phasing out the Kinyindu language, and with it the Nyindu identity.
The following video was produced by Global Witness based on interviews and research in 67 communities of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It tells the personal stories of the impacts of large-scale logging companies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxn5jfgED1w&feature=player_embedded
Land Acknowledgement
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