The indigenous "pygmy" peoples living in the Congo Basin and in the
high mountain forests of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa
were originally semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. The Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to some 600,000 indigenous
"pygmies", whose way of life is considered to be in harmony with
nature. Access to their ancestral lands and security of tenure are of
fundamental importance to the indigenous "pygmy" peoples, as
they depend entirely on the forests for their well-being, identity and
survival.