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Two Baka men from a community who were evicted to make way for Odzala-Kokoua National Park. Many people in the village have been beaten or abused by park rangers. ‘We are afraid that if park rangers see us in the forest they will beat us.’ The park was made a World Heritage Site last year
[©Survival]
UNESCO, the educational, scientific and cultural arm of the United Nations, has been accused of complicity in the illegal eviction and abuse of indigenous people around the world in a report published today — World Heritage Day.
In its report, rights organisation Survival International uncovers repeated cases of torture, rape, and killings of indigenous people in and around Unesco-designated world heritage sites.
The report highlights the case of the Maasai people in Tanzania who live near the Ngorongoro conservation area. The government there plans to evict thousands of Maasai from lands where they have lived for generations — a move Unesco has explicitly backed, according to the report.
The charter emerged from a profoundly democratic process where people across South Africa answered ‘What kind of country do we want?’ — but imperial backlash and neoliberal compromise deferred its deepest transformations, argues RONNIE KASRILS
The Congolese independence leader’s uncompromising speech about 80 years of European colonial brutality and injustice went round the world in 1960, and within months, he had been executed by Belgian and CIA-backed forces, writes KEITH BARLOW
ANSELM ELDERGILL draws attention to a legal case on Tuesday in which a human rights group is challenging the government’s decision to allow the sale of weapons used against Palestinians
