The Pygmies of Mambassa

What makes the problem of the pygmy populations more acute today is unfortunately the unexpected, almost historical, panorama of another century that the society, the life and the situation of the indigenous pygmy populations reveal. A situation that approaches a dramatic tragedy bordering on the unacceptable. "These populations live in an unjust and unacceptable context of discrimination, stigmatization, exclusion and vulnerability. Kept apart from the national community, marginalized to the extreme, the pygmies are doubly victimized: out of history and without cultural reference points, since even their heritage is threatened with extinction... Driven to de facto marginality, the pygmy populations find themselves helpless victims, deprived of all their fundamental rights. The book plunges you into the meanders of one of these communities, that of Mambasa, in Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and reviews the different aspects of a difficult integration of these populations who aspire to dignity and recognition.