Sarkha

FEB 2021 | ISSUE 01

Sarkha AFRIKAN VOICES

INSIDE THE ISSUE Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities,

POLARIZING SET OF IDEOLOGICALLY AN ANCIENTP EOPLE ON THE BRINK OFEXTINCTION Militarized and ideological ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ identities

The Policies of De-Nubianization in Egypt and Sudan

WWW.ARTRIKA.ORG

About Artrika ARTRIKA

WAS

DOCUMENTING

BIRTHED

REVOLUTIONARY

PRESERVING,

PROMOTING

INITIATIVES

THAT

CULTURE

AND

WITH

AND

HERITAGE,

PROMOTE

A

ART

VISION

AIMED

OF

AT

REVIVING

AFRICAN

SOCIAL

CHANGE.

WHILE

DEVELOPING

FOLLOWING ALL THE CHALLENGES SUDAN HAS FACED,

FROM THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE REGIMES AFTER, ARTRIKA WAS FORMED AS A PLATFORM TO SAVE, PRESERVE

AND

PROMOTE

OUR

CULTURE

AND

HERITAGE IN SUDAN, A COUNTRY MARRIED TO ART

SINCE ITS EXISTENCE. THE WAR IN SUDAN HAS HAD MANY EFFECTS, INCLUDING THE LOSS OF CULTURE,

HERITAGE AND IDENTITY. WITH SUDAN AS ASTART BUT LATER

ON

EXTENDING

THIS

INITIATIVE

TO

MORE

COUNTRIES IN AFRICA WE ARE A GROUP OF ACTIVISTS WORKING HERITAGE

ON

OF

PRESERVING

THE

PEOPLE,

THE

CULTURE

PARTICULARLY

AND

THOSE

AFFECTED BY THE WAR. WE FOCUS ON PEACEFUL

‘ARTISTIC ACTIVISM’ USING ART AND VARIOUS FORMS OF MEDIA AS TOOLS.

contact us

Contributited by Prof. Alex de Waal

Social media artrika www.artrika.org Artrika0@gmail.com

Dr. Muhamed Jalal Konan Tipen Rethabile Thantsha Reel Mauz Tsakane C Langa Tom Rhodes Azza Abdalla

Population of Sudan (2020 and historical)

By UN |

The Sudan Population (Live) counter shows a

the total number of Sudan Population

continuously updated estimate of the current

44.5 million, and the numbers of IDPs

population

of

Worldometer's

Sudan RTS

delivered

algorithm,

by which

and refugees under UN system about 4.6 millions ,

processes data collected from the United

According

Nations Population Division.The Population of

Refugees and IDPs are not counted

Sudan (1950 - 2019) chart plots the total

Info by UNHCR

population count as of July 1 of each year,

By the end of 2021, Sudan is expected

from 1950 to 2019.The Yearly Population Growth

Rate

chart

plots

the

annual

percentage changes in population registered on July 1 of each year, from 1951 to 2019. This value can differ from the Yearly % Change shown in the historical table, which shows

to

the

"Worldometers"

to host 1,067,597 refugees, of which 762,704 (71%) South Sudanese Origen with 624,349 IDP returnees expected in Darfur and 79,247 across other States.

the last year equivalent percentage change assuming

homogeneous

change

in

the

preceding five year period.

WORLDOMETERS

think less, live more

By Konan |

WHO ARE THE DARFURIANS? ARAB AND AFRICAN IDENTITIES, VIOLENCE AND EXTERNAL ENGAGEMENT

by Alex de Waal

SUDANIC IDENTITIES

This paper is an attempt to explain the processes of identity formation that have taken place in Darfur over the last four centuries. The basic story is of four overlapping processes of identity formation, each of them primarily associated with a different period in the region’s history. The four are the ‘Sudanic identities’ associated with the Dar Fur sultanate, Islamic identities, the administrative tribalism associated with the 20th century Sudanese state, and the recent polarization of ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ identities, associated with new forms of external intrusion and internal violence. It is a story that emphasizes the much-neglected east-west axis of Sudanese identity, arguably as important as the north-south axis, and redeems the neglect of Darfur as a separate and important locus for state formation in Sudan, paralleling and competing with the Nile Valley. It focuses on the incapacity of both the modern Sudanese state and international actors to comprehend the singularities of Darfur, accusing much Sudanese historiography of ‘Nilocentrism’, namely the use of analytical terms derived from the experience of the Nile Valley to apply to Darfur.

The first of the processes of identity formation is, the ‘Sudanic model’ associated with indigenous state formation. In this respect, it is crucial to note that Dar Fur (the term I will use for the independent sultanate, from c. 1600 to 1916, with a break 1874-98) was a separate centre of state formation from the Nile Valley, which was at times more powerful than its riverain competitors.

Indeed, Dar Fur ruled Kordofan from about 1791 to 1821 and at times had dominion over parts of the Nile Valley, and for much of its life the Mahdist state was dominated by Darfurians. Before the 20th century, only once in recorded history did a state based on the Nile rule Darfur, and then only briefly and incompletely (1874-82). This has been grossly neglected in the ‘Nilocentric’ historiography of Sudan. Rather than the ‘two Sudans’ familiar to scholars and politicians, representing North and South, we should consider ‘three Sudans’ and include Dar Fur as well.The Keira Sultanate followed on from a Tunjur kingdom, with a very similarly-placed core in northern Jebel Marra (and there are many continuities between the two states, notably in the governance of the northern province) and a Daju state, based in the south of the mountain. Under the sultanate, we have an overall model of identity formation with a core Fur-Keira identity, surrounded by an ‘absorbed’ set of identities which can be glossed as Fur-Kunjara (with the Tunjur ethnicity, the historic state-forming predecessor of the Fur-Keira) enjoying similarly privileged status immediately to the north). This is a pattern of ethnic-political absorption familiar to scholars of states including imperial Ethiopia, the Funj, KanemBorno and other Sudanic entities. Analysing this allows us to begin to address some of the enduring puzzles of Fur ethnography and linguistics, namely the different political structures of the different Fur clans and the failure to classify the Fur language, which appears to have been creolized as it spread from its core communities. However, the ethnography and history of the Fur remain desperately under-studied and under-documented.

Surrounding this are subjugated groups.

In the north are both nomadic Bedouins (important because camel ownership and long-distance trade were crucial to the wealth of the Sultan) and settled groups. Of the latter, the Zaghawa are the most important. In the 18th century, the Zaghawa were closely associated with the state. Zaghawa clans married into the ruling Keira family, and they provided administrators and soldiers to the court. To the south are more independent groups, some of which ‘became Fur’ by becoming absorbed into the Fur polity, and others of which retain a strong impulse for political independence, notably the Baggara Arabs. As in all such states, the king used violence unsparingly to subordinate these peripheral peoples.To the far south is Dar Fertit, the term ‘Fertit’ signifying the enslaveable peoples of the forest zone.

This is where the intrinsically violent nature of the Fur state is apparent. The state reproduced itself through dispatching its armies to the south, obtaining slaves and other plunder, and exporting them northwards to Egypt and the Mediterranean. This nexus of soldiers,

slaves and traders is familiar from the historiography of Sudanic states, where ‘wars without end’ were essential to ensure the wealth and power of the rulers.3 O’Fahey describes the slaving party as the state in miniature.4 This in turn arose because of the geo-political position of the Sultanate on the periphery of the Mediterranean world, consumer of slaves, ivory and other plunder-related commodities.5 During the 18th and 19th century, the Forty Days Road to Asyut was Egypt’s main source of slaves and other sub-Saharan commodities. When Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Egypt, he exchanged letters and gifts with the Sultan of Dar Fur.All the major groups in Darfur are patrilineal, with identity inherited through the male line. One implication of this is that identity change can occur through the immigration of powerful males, who were in a position to marry into leading families or displace the indigenous men. Historically, the exception may have been some groups classed as Fertit, which were matrilineal. A combination of defensive identity formation under external onslaught and Islamization appears to have made matrilineality no more than a historical fragment. This, however, only reinforces the point that identity change is a struggle to control women’s bodies. With the exception of privileged women at court, women are almost wholly absent from the historical record. But, knowing the sexual violence that has accompanied recent conflicts, we can surmise that rape and abduction were likely to have been mechanisms for identity change on the southern frontier.

PHOTO BY NU

d

The transfer of the term ‘African’ from Southern Sudan to Darfur, and its use, not to encompass the Fertit groups but to embrace the state-forming Fur and Tunjur, and the similarly historically privileged Zaghawa, Masalit, Daju and Borgu, is therefore an interesting and anthropologically naïve category transfer. ‘African’ should have rather different meanings in Darfur.

www.artrika.org | https://items.ssrc.org/

IF ANYONE NEEDS ME I'LL BE READING. PLEASE DON'T NEED ME

YOU CONFISCATED MY LAND AND THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE ME IS SLAVE

South Africa on the way...

By Name : T.C Langa slave? you confiscated my land and the best way to describe me is slave ? got diamonds and gold and the best jewelry you could give me was chains , I tried so hard to fit in , so I walked like you , talked like you and yet you couldn’t even learn how to say my name , seems like destiny has led you back to this child to face your penalty , but with clarity I shall face my enemy, I promise I won’t commit a felony , a barbarian you dreadfully labeled me , but I’m not here to fight ,I’m asking for equality , brave right ? in all honesty I’m not a saint but I’m still sane and killing you won’t take away my pain , so even if I spilled your blood what would I gain? , I read somewhere that vitamin D , evolution and migration caused this drift isn’t that insane ? picture this , we tolerated pig behavior , they picked and separated our children sold them to slavery as we peeked through the piggery all because of pigmentation , that’s our sad history a picture of injustice and misery promoted by the same people we named our streets after, but I hope one day our sadness will be erased by the sound of laughter .

Name : Tsakane Celester Langa Age: 22 Born : tembisa hospital Where I live : Alexandra Township (the ghetto) Education: studied marketing at TUT ( fees paid by nsfas ) What I do : I’m an assistant teacher at carter Primary School, I help kids learn how to read and write we also teach kids dance and music Do I have talent : yes , my talent is taking care of kids I guess ♀ , truth is I don’t have to try , children just love me

MILITARIZED AND IDEOLOGICAL ‘ARAB’ AND ‘AFRICAN’ IDENTITIES The other lenses for analyzing Darfurian identities are too subtle and complex to be of much use for journalists and aid workers. So we are stuck with a polarizing set of ideologically constructed identities, mutually antagonistic. If, as seems likely, these labels become strongly attached, they will hugely complicate the task of reconstructing the social fabric of Darfur—or, given the impossibility of returning to the recent past—they will obstruct the construction of a new Darfurian identity that stresses the common history of the region and the interdependence of its peoples.

by Alex de Waal The complex history of identity formation in Darfur provides rich material for the creation of new ethnic identities. What has happened is that as Darfur has been further incorporated into national Sudanese processes, wider African and Middle Eastern processes, and political globalization, Darfur’s complex identities have been radically and traumatically simplified, creating a polarized ‘Arab versus African’ dichotomy that is historically bogus, but disturbingly powerful. The ideological construction of these polarized identities has gone hand-in-hand with the militarization of Darfur, first through the spread of small arms, then through the organization of militia, and finally through fullscale war. The combination of fear and violence is a particularly potent combination for forging simplified and polarized identities, and such labels are likely to persist as long as the war continues.

The U.S. government’s determination that the atrocities in Darfur amount to ‘genocide’ and the popular use of the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ by journalists, aid agencies and diplomats, have further entrenched this polarization, to the degree that community leaders for whom the term ‘African’ would have been alien even a decade ago, now readily identify themselves as such when dealing with international interlocutors.Internally, this polarization began with some of Darfur’s Arabs. Exposed to the Islamist-Arabism of Khartoum, drawing upon the Arab lineage ideology latent in their Juheiyna identities, and often closely involved in Colonel Gaddafi’s ideologically Arabist enterprises in the 1970s and ’80s, these men adopted an Arab supremacist ideology. This seems to have been nurtured by Gaddafi’s dreams of an Arab homeland across the Sahara and Sahel (notwithstanding the Libyan leader’s expansive definition of ‘Arab’ which, true to his own Bedouin roots, includes groups such as the Tuareg), and by competition for posts in Darfur’s regional government in the 1980s. In 1987, a group of Darfurian Arabs wrote a now-famous letter to Prime Minister Sadiq el Mahdi, demanding a better deal for Darfur’s Arabs. They appealed to him as ‘one of their own’. At one level this was simply a legitimate demand for better political representation and better services. But within it lurked an agenda of Arab supremacism.

Subsequently, it has become very difficult to separate the ambitious agenda of a Darfurian Arab homeland from wider and more modest goals, and to identify which documents are real and which are not. But there is no doubt that, twinned with similar ambitions among the Chadian Juheiyna Arabs, there was a political and territorial agenda emerging. This helps explain why some of the first and fiercest clashes of 1987 were in the highland Jebel Marra area of Gulu, a territory which would be clearly indicated a ‘Fur’ heartland on any moral geography of the region including that of Sheikh Hilal, reproduced above, whose son Musa has since become infamous as commander of a major PDF brigade. The attacks on Gulu in 1987 and again in 2002 and 2004 represent a symbolic strike at the heart of Fur identity and legitimacy, as well as a tactical assault on a Fur resistance stronghold.

This newly-politicized Arab identity was also militarized.

Three overlapping strands of militarization can be seen.

One is the Ansar, the core followers of the Mahdi, who are historically a political, religious and military movement.

Between 1970 and 1977, the Ansar leadership was in exile in Libya, planning its return to power, which it tried in 1976 and failed. Many returned to Sudan in 1977 as part of the ‘National Reconciliation’ between Sadiq el Mahdi and Nimeiri, but were not, as they had hoped, absorbed into the national army. Instead, they were settled on farming schemes. Disproportionately drawn from the Baggara tribes, former Ansar fighters were instrumental in the creation of the first Baggara militias in the mid-1980s. A second group of Ansar returned in 1985-6, following the fall of Nimeiri.27 While in Libya, the Ansar had been organized, trained and armed alongside Gaddafi’s Islamic Legion, which drew recruits from across the Sahelian countries.28 This is the second contributor to the militarization of the Bedouin. The Islamic Legion was disbanded after its defeat in Ouadi Doum in 1987, but its legacy remained. The third contributor was the formation of Arab militias in Chad, which used Darfur as a rear base for their persistent but unsuccessful attempts to take state power. The different political, tribal and ideological strands of this story have yet to be teased apart. Clearly there are important differences within these groups, including a competition for the allegiance of the Ansar fighters between the Umma leadership and the NIF. Gaddafi was also quite capable of treating with non-Arab groups such as the Zaghawa when it suited him, and was quick to recognize the government of Idris Deby when it took power in late 1990. Although Deby had been a commander of the forces that defeated the Libyan army and Islamic Legion a few years earlier, Gaddafi’s main quarrel was with Hissene Habre.While there is a definite strain of Arab supremacism, the significance of ‘Arab’ identity must not be overstated. The groups involved in the current conflict are overwhelmingly Juheiyna Abbala (excluding for example the Zayadiya), with relatively few Baggara groups (notably including one part of the Beni Halba, many of whom were armed and mobilized in 1991 to counter the SPLA incursion into Darfur). This means that the largest and most influential of Darfur’s Arabs are not involved, including the Baggara Rizeigat, the Habbaniya, the Maaliya and most of the Taaisha. As the conflict continues to spread and escalate, this may change, and there are clear attempts by some in government to bring in all Arab groups (especially the Rizeigat) on their sides, and attempts by some on the rebel sides to provoke them.

WWW.FRAMEMAG.COM | 20

CONCL USION

BY ALEX DE WAAL

First, who are the Darfurians? I argue that Darfur has had a remarkably stable continuous identity as a locus for state formation over several centuries, and is a recognizable political unit in a way that is relatively uncommon in Africa. But the incorporation

of

Darfur

into

Sudan,

almost as an afterthought, has led not only to the economic and political marginalization of Darfurians, but the near-total neglect of their unique history and identity. Just as damaging for Darfurians

as

their

socio-political

marginalization has been the way in which they have been forced to become Sudanese, on terms that are alien to them. To overcome this, we must move to acknowledging a politics of three Sudans: North, South and West. It is probably a naive hope, but a recognition of the unique contribution of Darfurians and the inclusive nature of African identity in Darfur could provide a way out of Sudan’s national predicament of undecided

identity.

Short

of

this

ambition, it is important for Darfurians to identify what they have in common, and undertake the hard intellectual labour of establishing their common identity.

PHOTO BY NU

ARTRIKA

UNAMID DARFUR

THE POLICIES OF DE-NUBIANIZATION IN EGYPT AND SUDAN: AN ANCIENT PEOPLE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION

marginalizing the Nubians in both Egypt and the Sudan by, first, driving them away from their historical homelands by systematically impoverishing their region; secondly, re-settling Arab groups in the lands the Nubians leave behind; thirdly, pushing the Nubians into Arabicization through biased educational curricula at the expense of their own languages and culture; PHOTO BY MIKEL

BY DR. MOHAMMED JALAL A. HASHIM

THE ARABIZATION OF SUDAN

The Scramble for Arab Genealogies

The Paradox of the Black Arab who is Anti-Black

With the weakening of the Christian kingdoms, between the 14th and 16th centuries, new Islamic and Arabized kinglets began appearing and eventually succeeded in replacing the old regime [Yusuf Fadl, 1973; Shibeika, 1991]. The first was the Kunuz (Bani al-Kanz) kingdom around Asuan area in present-day Egyptian Nubia, to be followed a little later by the Rabi?a-Beja Islamic kinglet of Hajar. In the late 15th century the Islamic kinglet of Tegali (Togole) in the Nuba Mountains came into existence. A century later the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Second made a thrust deep in Nubia in the aftermath of which appeared the Northern Nubian Islamic kinglets of the Kushshaf, Mah$as, and Argo. Two centuries later the Fur kingdom of Keira was established upon the fall of the Tunjur kinglet. But the most important was the Funj Sultanate which came into existence in the early 16th century and which succeeded in spreading its influence over most of these kinglets. In fact the unification of such kinglets along with many other tribal shaykhdoms is what has constituted the State in ancient and present-day Sudan.The Funj Sultanate came into existence with slavery looming in the background and with the black colour fully stigmatized by being synonymous to ‘slave’. By the turn of the 15th century, Soba, the capital of the last Christian kingdom of Allodia, fell at the hands of the Arabized Nubians (known in Sudan as the Arabs) led by ?Abdu Allah Jamma? al-Girenati (‘Jamma?’, an adjective literally meaning the ‘gatherer’ for unifying the divided Arabs (?Arab al-Gawasma); ‘Girenati’, a diminutive adjective literally meaning ‘of the horns’ in reference to the royal horned headgear as was the case in the Christian Kingdoms). Immediately after the fall of Soba, a black African people called the Funj appeared led by ?Amara Dungus. He achieved a treaty with the Arabs after defeating them following which the Funj Sultanate was established. As the founders were mostly blacks, it was also called “al-Salt,ana al-Zarqa’”, i.e. the ‘Black Sultanate’. As it came in response to the growing influence of the Islamo-Arabized Sudanese it explicitly showed an Arab and Islamic orientation. The new formations of Arabized tribes began claiming Arab descent supported with traditionally authenticated genealogies. The transformation from African identity to Arab identity is reflected in the ideological cliché of dropping the ‘matrilineal system’, where descent through the mother’s lineage is only recognized, and adopting the ‘patrilineal system’, where descent through the father’s lineage is only considered. The small family units compensated for their vulnerability by claiming the noble ‘sharif’ descent, i.e. descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Eventually they would be enabled by this claimed descent to appropriate both wealth and power, something the immediate descendants were not ordained to have while Prophet Muhammad was still alive. To be on an equal footing with these tribes in matters pertaining to power and authority, the black Funj also claimed an Umayyad descent. Scholars in Arabic and Islamic sciences from other parts of the Islamic world were encouraged to settle in the Sudan.

Thenceforward the Arabized Africans of middle Sudan will pose as non-black Arabs. Intermarriage with light-skinned people would be consciously sought as a process of cleansing blood from blackness. A long process of identity change has begun; in order to have access to power and to be at least accepted as free humans, African people tended to drop both their identities and languages and replace them with Arabic language and Arab identity. The first step in playing that game is to overtly deplore the blacks and dub them as slaves while being themselves black. A new ideological awareness of race and colour came into being. The shades of the colour of blackness were perceived as authentic racial differentiations [cf. Deng, 1995]. A Sudanese-bound criterion for racial colour was formed by which the light black was seen as an Arab, wad ?Arab and wad balad, i.e. white or at least non-black. The jet-black Sudanese was seen as an African, i.e. slave (?abd). The shades of blackness go as follows, starting from jet-black (aswad), black (azrag, literally blue), brownish-black (akhdar, literally green), lightbrownish (gamh%i, i.e. wheat-coloured), then dark-white, which is considered as ‘properly’ white. This last sub-category is paradoxically stigmatized more than the jet-black. Then a host of derogatory terms was generated in the culture and colloquial Arabic of Middle Sudan, which dehumanized the black Africans, such as farikh, gargur, etc. In this context the properly white or light-coloured, as mentioned above, are also discredited. They are given the derogatory name of ‘h%alab’ i.e. gypsy. A Sudanese Arab proverb says that ‘the slaves, i.e. black people, are second class, but the h$alab are third class’.

THIS ARTICLE IS EXCERPTED FROM AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT.

AFRICANWRITINGIO N ONLINE

Stigma vs. PrestigmaIt is in these folk racial attitudes that the seeds of a Sudanese ideology of Arab-oriented domination over Africans was sown.

It works through the mechanism of categorization, using: (1) the stigma of slavery, which condemns blackness and people of African identity to the margins or bottom of society and the cultural hierarchy, forcing them to dwell at the periphery of Sudanese national life, and (2) the prestigma (coined by the present writer from prestige to serve as a countering term to stigma) of the so-called free, non-black and Arabs, to entrench them in the power, affluence and influence centers of Sudan.

This racial ideology, in its drive to achieve self-actualization, underlines a process of alienation and domination, creating a category of black African people who do not recognize themselves as black Africans. While posing to be whites, they do not hold proper white people in high esteem. They tend savagely to dominate the Africans by enslaving and stigmatizing them, and then they largely indulge themselves in the process of arabization to be more like the Arabs with whom they identify.This ideology of alienation has prevailed for the last five centuries up to the moment. It has been consolidated by successive political regimes – whether under the Turco-Egyptian or Egyptian-British or national rule. It finds its roots in the vice of slavery. No wonder slavery was once again in full swing by the late 20th century as a result of an extreme intensification of arabization, or the process of prestigmatic Islamo-Arabism, by the State. By sublimating the Arab as their model through this erroneous and confused concept of race, the Arabized people of Sudan have made themselves permanent second-class Arabs. The consequences of this do not only affect them, but also their whole country, now split up between Arabism and Africanism. It has never dawned on them that speaking a language does not necessarily equate becoming of the nationality bearing that language. In fact the so-called Arabs in Sudan comprise different peoples with different cultures but one language: they are Arabophone.

The Sudanese people are Arabophone Africans just as there are Francophone and Anglophone Africans.

THE ESSAY WILL BE PUBLISHED IN SERIALS

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SUNRISE

PHOTO BY BUKER

A Belated Self-Discovery?

The weak fabric of this colour concept was torn into tatters when Sudanese prestigma or arabization came in contact with the Arabs Proper in the mid 1970s, when they worked as expatriates in the rich petroleum countries of Arabia. There, at the historical milieu of this racial bigotry, they were regarded as nothing more than black Africans, i.e. slaves. It caused a turmoil that triggered a slow process of self-discovery as a result of which the ideology of domination was eventually weakened. By the mid 1990s the image of the rebel leader of SPLM/SPLA, John Garang, who is a jet-black African from Southern Sudan was much more acceptable to a great number of the Arabized Sudanese as the real leader of the whole movement of the political opposition to the Islamic regime of Khartoum. The military weight of SPLM/SPLA would have never mattered in making that acceptance possible if the ideology of domination was still intact

Explore More African Culture Art Identites

in the next issue The Scramble for Arab Genealogies by M.J.H & Alex de Waal PHOTO BY KONAN

Special thanks to the Artrika teams and people who Contributed

01

items.ssrc - African Writing Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation Dr. Mohammed Jalal A. Hashim is a Sudanese writer and lecturer at Khartoum University Editorial and Design - Konan Tipen,Tom Rhodes, Reel Mauz, Rethabile Thantsha, Dr. Fatum Ahji, Tsakane C Langa, Azza Abdalla

info There are 370 million Indigenous people around the world and spread across more than 90 countries. They belong to more than 5,000 different Indigenous peoples and speak more than 4,000 languages. Indigenous people represent about 5% of the world’s population.

The vast majority of them – 70% – live in Asia.

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