Topic: Protecting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Delegate Name: Dane Webb
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Democratic Republic of the Congo position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Protecting the rights of indigenous people inside of the DR Congo has always been and remains a challenge to this day. For some background, there are four main groups of indigenous peoples in the DR Congo The Mbuti, The Baka, The Batwa of the West and the Batwa of the east. There is no definite number of how many of these people there are in the DR Congo, as it is always a point of argument. The government estimates there to be about 600,000 indigenous peoples while civil society organizations argue that there are up to 2,000,000 of these peoples in the DR Congo. The life of these peoples is a nomadic life. These peoples are strewn about 10 of the 11 provinces in the country. These people live off the forest and it’s resources hunting and gathering. However, problems began to arise after logging began and the forest began shrinking. This forced many indigenous peoples out of their homes and their lifestyles of hunting and gathering shoving them into the edges of cities across the DR Congo leaving them no home and extreme poverty. Even further past that, many of these indigenous peoples are forced into manual labor due to discrimination and having no where else to turn. These peoples once being shoved into this new world, are also not given any formal training or education. And besides that, they have absolutely no health benefits. None of this seems to be changing either due to the very heavy discrimination these peoples receive on a daily basis. However, there does seem to be hope. Recently laws have been passed to encourage and help foster new conditions for these peoples. For example the 2002 Forest Code and the UN Declaration on the rights of peoples to which the DRC is a signatory. The plan of the DR Congo is to expand on these laws and build up walls protecting the rights of these people. We will build up their rights and also attempt to strike an agreement between these indigenous peoples and the countries that host them that allows these peoples to continue living with their traditions on their own land but with regards to the country they live in. The bottom line is that this problem is an issue that has been with many nations for far too long, and we will only stop it by expanding the rights of these citizens in their own countries.
