Indigenous Rights

The Forest People Programme (FPP) advocates an alternative vision of how forests should be managed and controlled, based on respect for the rights of the peoples who know them best. They work with communities to secure their rights, build up their own organisations and negotiate with governments and companies as to how economic development and conservation is best achieved on their lands.http://www.forestpeoples.org/ Forest policies commonly treat forests as empty lands controlled by the State and available for 'development' - colonisation, logging, plantations, dams, mines, oil wells, gas pipelines and agribusiness. These encroachments often force forest peoples out of their forest homes. Some conservation schemes to establish wilderness reserves also deny forest-dwellers' rights. Cut off from their ancestral territories, forest peoples face poverty, the erosion of their customary institutions, loss of identity and cultural collapse similar to the first people of Kalahari, Botswana also known as the Bushmen. They were forced out of their ancestral land by the government to settle in camps where they are exposed to AIDS, drugs, violence etc. and are dying. When they try to hunt or gather food they are tortured and/or arrested.
http://www.iwant2gohome.org/ for more info

The judges ruled that our forced relocation from our beloved land was unlawful, and that we have the right to go back and hunt there as we have always done. However, despite the judgment, the government won't let us hunt and is stopping us using the water borehole on our land. It has also refused to help us with transport home. Because of this, most of us have not yet been able to return.
It seems that the indeginous people of the Kalahari have no power or are too small to fight for what they want because the government has the power to do as they please.