Displacement and discrimination devastating forest dwellers
Across the forests of central Africa, forest peoples have lived by hunting and gathering for millenia. But in the past few decades their homelands have been devastated by logging, war and encroachment from farmers.
With expansion of protected areas in response to these problems, their livelihoods have become increasingly impossible and their strong ties to their forests are under strain.
Forest peoples who live on the land they have nurtured for centuries have better health and nutrition than their neighbours who have been evicted from their forest land.
The consequences of losing their land are all too predictable: a slide into poverty, ill-health and a profound destruction of their identity, culture and their connection to their land that creates a new underclass requiring central government support.
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| © Salomé/Survival |
The conflict in the DRC (Congo) has been especially brutal for the country’s ‘Pygmy’ peoples, who have suffered killings and rape, and allegedly been the victims of cannibalism from the heavily armed fighters.
In 2003, Bambuti representatives petitioned the UN to protect their people from horrific abuse by armed militia in Congo, including extremely high incidences of rape of women by the armed men. One of the outcomes has been a soaring rate of HIV/Aids.
‘In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted and eaten literally as though they were game animals, as has recently happened,’ Sinafasi Makelo, Mbuti spokesman.
The Batwa also suffered disproportionately in the Rwandan genocide of 1994: studies estimate that 30 % of Batwa were killed – more than double the national average.
Where Pygmy communities continue to have access to the rich forest resources on which they have traditionally depended, their levels of nutrition are good.
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| © Salomé/Survival |
When displaced from the forests – usually without compensation or alternative means of making a living – their health dramatically declines. One study reports that 80% of sedentary Baka in Cameroon have yaws (a painful skin condition).
Further studies have shown that forest-dwelling Pygmy communities have lower levels of many illnesses compared with neighbouring settled Bantu populations, including malaria, rheumatism, respiratory infections and hepatitis C.
In addition, communities can no longer access the forest medicines on which they relied and are in danger of losing their rich traditional knowledge of herbal medicine.
Most communities cannot access healthcare due to lack of availability, lack of funds and humiliating ill-treatment. Vaccination programmes can be slow to reach forest peoples and there are reports of Pygmy people being discriminated against by medical staff.
