rofotojournalismus:

International Women’s Day: tribal heroines

(via The Guardian)

In many tribal communities, including the Hadza and the Innu featured here, women and men enjoy equal status. But tribal people often face displacement, murder and rape, according to Survival International. Often humiliated by governments that perpetuate the idea they are ‘backward’, some have their lands taken away. Yet resistance is growing as they take action to protect their land and ways of life.

What problems do tribal peoples have?

Violence

Tribal people are still violently attacked, and sometimes killed, particularly in parts of South & Central America, Africa and Asia. 
Violence, often self-inflicted, is also a big problem in wealthy countries, which have largely dispossessed their indigenous peoples (such as Canada and the USA, Australia and New Zealand).

Slavery

In some areas, tribal people are still held in a form of slavery, called ‘debt-bondage’, where they are forced to produce raw materials to pay a supposed debt to an outsider.

Racism

The view that tribal people are ‘primitive’ and not able to make rational choices about their own future derives from a colonialist, racist ideology. It is still used to justify their dispossession.

Land theft

Tribal peoples are generally self-sufficient and dependent on their land to provide their food and support their way of life. It also forms the bedrock of their identity. It is stolen for ‘development’, such as mining, dam-building, farming, etc., as well as for ‘conservation’ projects.

Resource theft

Even where the land itself isn’t taken, its resources often are. These can be timber or minerals.

Forced progress

All peoples are changing all the time, but changes forced on tribal peoples in the name of ‘progress’ result in a far lower quality of life than before, with increased illness, suicide, imprisonment, substance abuse and dependence etc. Changes should be under the control of the people themselves.

More information at Survival International’s website.

Photographs :

1. The Dongria Kondh women of the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha state, India – who call themselves Jharnia, or protectors of streams – have lived in the lush, forested hills for millennia. For the past 10 years these women have worked with Dongria men to protect their most sacred mountain, Niyam Dongar, against plans for an opencast bauxite mine. (Jason Taylor/Survival International) 

2. The Bushmen are the original people of southern Africa. Between 1997 and 2002, after the discovery of diamond fields in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, almost all Bushmen were taken from their homes in the reserve and driven to eviction camps. Some women and their families have now returned to the reserve, but harassment and intimidation continue. (Mark Håkansson/Survival International) 

3. A Nenets woman outside her chum, or teepee, in Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula. Her homeland is a remote, wind-blasted place of permafrost, serpentine rivers and dwarf shrubs; the reindeer-herding Nenets people have migrated across it for over a thousand years. Today, their way of life is severely affected by oil drilling and climate change. (Steve Morgan/Survival International)

4. These Innu women on the shores of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula in north-eastern Canada have resisted attempts by missionaries and the Canadian government to impose European patterns of living. The women have been prominent in opposing extractive industries on Innu lands, and have been active in efforts the people are making to maintain their way of life. (Dominick Tyler/Survival International)

5. Between Tanzania’s Lake Eyasi and the Great Rift Valley live the Hadza, a tribe of approximately 1,300 hunter-gatherers. The Hadza are one of the oldest lineages of humankind. Over the past 50 years, however, the tribe has lost 90% of its land. The tribe value equality highly, recognising no official leaders. Hadza women have a great amount of autonomy and participate equally in decision making with men. (Joanna Eede/Survival International)

theatlantic:

In Focus: Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution: Two Years Later

Twenty-four months have passed since the start of the uprising that led to the overthrow of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. In that time, much has changed, but many of the most vocal revolutionaries are not yet satisfied. President Mohamed Morsi, who assumed office last summer, has frustrated the opposition within the new government. Morsi has sought to expand his powers by decree and has been accused of heavily favoring the wishes of his own political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is promoting a new Islamist constitution for Egypt. In the midst of all this, many of the same activists who set things in motion in 2011 took to the streets again this past weekend, feeling that their voices had been drowned out once again. At least 50 are now reported to have been killed in clashes between demonstrators and government (and pro-government) groups, and a state of emergency has been declared in three provinces. 

See more. [Images: AP, Reuters, Getty]

Congo M23 rebels withdraw from strategic city of Goma

The rebel M23 fighters pull out after intense regional and international pressure. One commander says they can retake the eastern Congo city whenever they want.

 The rebels’ truck rounded the corner at breakneck speed and skidded onto the  wrong side of a pitted bush road, with several dozen fighters swaying on the back. Two weeks after seizing the eastern Congolese city of Goma, the M23 rebels were withdrawing Saturday, leaving behind an uneasy city.

They snaked along the road north, riding in looted government cars, trucks piled high with mattresses and a minibus stolen from the state television and radio agency. One M23 spokesman stood by his fancy SUV, which had broken down in the road, trying to make a call. Others trudged on foot, carrying boxes of ammunition and bundles of food and clothing on their heads.

M23 fighters, backed by neighboring Rwanda, caused a geopolitical crisis with their surprise capture of Goma nearly two weeks ago. They embarrassed Congolese President Joseph Kabila, whose troops gave up the city without a fight. They exposed Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose persistent military interference in one of the world’s most troubled regions was widely condemned. And they triggered criticism of the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission, with Congolese complaining that the world body’s troops should have repelled the rebels, even as government forces retreated.

M23, accused of myriad human rights abuses, is the latest in a string of militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s troubled east with strong ethnic and military links to the Kagame government, always denied by Rwandan authorities. A recent United Nations report on the conflict offered strong evidence of Rwanda’s military support for the rebels.

Congo’s east has seen years of conflict, much of it linked to internecine struggles to control minerals and other wealth, with regional and ethnic tension complicating the picture.

Pictured: M23 rebels wait on a truck before their departure rom the city of Goma in eastern Congo. (Phil Moore / AFP/Getty Images / December 1, 2012)