News / Africa
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June 18, 2008
Indigenous Peoples in Uganda Call for Special Parliamentary Representation
Indigenous Peoples from across Uganda, including the Batwa, Lendu, and Paluwo have called upon Parliament to extend the same special representation rights to them and other ethnic minorities as are currently extended to youth, the handicapped, women, workers, and the army. Each of these groups elect their own representatives to Parliament and are granted a seat at the policy-making table. In addition to their call for greater representation, the Indigenous Peoples called upon the government to compensate them for their lands taken to establish protected areas and game preserves.
Link:
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/632806
April 10, 2008
New Campaign Launched to Restore Water Rights of San of the Kalahari
Incoming Botswana President Ian Khama has been welcomed to his new office with an outpouring of letters asking that the water rights of the San Peoples be restored. In 2002, the government of Botswana, filled in the water bore hole on the Central Kalahari Game Reserve with cement and then forcibly evicted the San Peoples who had lived on the land for tens of thousands of years. In December 2006, the Botswanan Supreme Court ruled that the government had acted illegally and ordered the government to restore the San to their land. Thus far, the government has limited access only to the defendants in the court case and is still refusing to undo the damage done when the watering hole was filled in. The letter writing campaign is being coordinated by Survival International.
Separately the San's cause was supported by best-selling novelist Alexander McCall Smith, whose famous No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels are set in Botswana. Long silent on the issue, McCall Smith recently told a British newspaper, "Everybody I know hopes that this blot on the country's history will be resolved in a way which respects the rights and feelings of the San."
Links:
• http://voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-04-01-voa39.cfm
• http://www.survival-international.org/news/3186
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