The African Commission of Human and Peoples Rights recently made public its historic ruling on the Indigenous Batwa Peoples’ right to return to their ancestral home from which they were violently evicted, when the Kahuzi-Biega National Park was created in Eastern DR Congo.
Up to 6,000 Batwa were made landless when their ancestral land was declared a protected area in the 1970s. They received no compensation and faced decades of severe discrimination, deprivation and abuse. “We have suffered so much and for so long, now the community deserves to go back to their land and have their rights respected”, says a Batwa quoted in an NGO press release on the decision. For more information in English, see here the REDD-Monitor post with links to the Minority Rights Group report and links to the ACHPR decision; For information in French, see here. For information in Spanish, see here.