San Youth Network

21/03/2026

03/03/2026

World Wildlife Day.

22/01/2026

📣 Are you a human-rights defender from a national, ethnic, religious, or linguistic minority group?

↪️ The UN Human Rights Office’s Minorities Fellowship Programme is your opportunity to gain world-class training, expand your global network, and amplify the voices of your community on the international stage.

You will gain:
🔹 A solid understanding of the UN system and international human rights mechanisms
🔹 Specialized focus on minority rights advocacy
🔹 Direct engagement with UN experts, global activists, and Geneva-based NGOs
🔹 A powerful network of change-makers from around the world

⏰ Apply by: 31 January 2026, at 23:59 (Geneva)

Apply here ➡️ https://buff.ly/hcUMyjP

14/01/2026

SAN YOUTH NETWORK STATEMENT ON POLITICAL RACISM AND THE PROTECTION OF INDIGENOUS DIGNITY.

The San Youth Network expresses profound concern and outrage over a recently circulated campaign video in which a political actor employs racialised language, personal ridicule, and harmful stereotypes in an apparent attempt to gain political advantage. The content of the video, which includes derogatory references to Indigenous Peoples of Botswana and disparaging remarks about Honourable Motsamai Motsamai, represents a troubling escalation of intolerance in our political space.

For Indigenous youth and communities, such rhetoric is not abstract or harmless. It echoes a long history of exclusion, misrepresentation, and discrimination that continues to shape unequal access, services, and political participation. When a political figure openly resorts to racial contempt, it reinforces systems of marginalisation and undermines national commitments to equality and social justice.

Botswana’s Constitution guarantees the right to dignity and freedom from discrimination. These rights are not conditional upon ethnicity, body type, or political affiliation. Campaigning that relies on humiliation, whether racial or physical, is a direct assault on these guarantees and signals a dangerous departure from issue-based, principled politics.

The San Youth Network rejects the narrative that Indigenous identity can be used as a political insult. Being San is not a defect, a failure, or a justification for hatred. It is an identity grounded in resilience, knowledge systems, and contributions to the nation’s heritage. The suggestion that Indigenous Peoples are collectively blameworthy or deserving of ridicule is not only false but deeply harmful.

As San Youth Network, we call for immediate accountability. This includes a public apology, clear condemnation by political leadership and party, and concrete measures to prevent the recurrence of racist and demeaning campaign practices. Political parties must discipline their members, and electoral authorities must enforce ethical standards that protect communities from hate-based campaigning.

Our advocacy is rooted in a simple principle: democracy cannot thrive where dignity is negotiable. Botswana’s future depends on leadership that confronts injustice, not exploits it, that builds unity, not division. Racism, whether explicit or implied, has no place in our politics, and Indigenous Peoples will not remain silent in the face of its resurgence.

Mmegi Sunday Standard/ The Telegraph BW Presidency BW Nama Development Trust Duma Gideon Boko IPACC - Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee United Nations Human Rights Botswana Khwedom Council

14/01/2026

🌍 Exciting Career Opportunity in Conservation & Community Empowerment! 🌱

The NACSO Training Institute (NTI) is seeking a dynamic and experienced Managing Director to lead our team in Windhoek, Namibia.

✨ What you’ll do:
• Provide strategic leadership
• Oversee accredited training programmes
• Position NTI as a leader in rural development, adult education & community empowerment

👩‍🎓 We’re looking for:
• Relevant academic background (Social Development, Adult Education, Business Management, Development Studies, Natural Resource Management, or related fields)
• 10+ years’ experience in rural development (5+ in senior management)
• Strong leadership, stakeholder engagement & fundraising skills
• Proven expertise in adult education-based training programmes

📅 Closing Date: 2 February 2026, 17:00
📩 Apply via email: [email protected] (Subject: NTI MD APPLICATION)

📍 Or hand-deliver to NACSO offices, 7 Rossini Street, Windhoek
🔗 Please share widely within your networks to help us find the right leader!

14/01/2026

⏰ Last call: Applications close 30 January

Applications are open for Cohort 6 of the Kofi Annan Fellowship in Global Health Leadership.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are now available to support prospective applicants.

Read the FAQs: https://ow.ly/eB7o50XWxhz
Apply: https://ow.ly/nP1E50XWxhv

05/12/2025

The 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém has concluded. As the climate crisis intensifies, the COP conferences are increasingly addressing the human face of the climate crisis: climate mobility.

On 8 December, 15:00–16:00 CET, the Global Centre for Climate Mobility (GCCM) will convene a LinkedIn Live event to examine the outcomes of COP30.

Register to participate here:
https://tally.so/r/jaeVGa

Please view the concept note for the event here: https://bit.ly/ConceptNotePost-COPLinkedInLive

In the lead-up to the event, we will share additional details and relevant updates with registered participants. You can also stay informed about the work of the GCCM and the LinkedIn Live session through our LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/gccmobility

02/12/2025

For the San in Botswana, the call for a Constitutional Court is especially important because their rights depend largely on how the Constitution is interpreted and enforced. Although the San have won important cases in courts, such as land and resource rights cases, these victories often protect only specific communities or issues. They do not change the Constitution itself, which still does not recognise the San as Indigenous Peoples or provide them with specific protection as a vulnerable group. This means future governments or courts can easily reverse progress through new laws or policies.

A Constitutional Court would provide stronger and more lasting protection by interpreting the Constitution in a way that clearly defines and safeguards fundamental rights for all, including marginalised groups like the San. It could rule on whether laws and government actions violate basic freedoms such as equality, culture, land use, and dignity. Without such a court, constitutional issues are handled within the general court system, which may lack the specialised focus and authority needed to protect deeply marginalised communities.

Even when the San win cases, enforcement is often slow or incomplete. A Constitutional Court could improve accountability by compelling the government to act. In the long term, it could also open doors for constitutional reform and recognition, giving the San lasting legal protection rather than temporary court victories.

02/12/2025

🌎The General Assembly adopted the historic resolution by recorded vote, proclaiming 5 September of each year as the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Women and Girls!

The resolution recognized that 5 September is already commemorated in several countries as the International Day of Indigenous Women, in honour of Indigenous women leaders who have dedicated their lives to the resistance and struggles for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, to promote awareness of the rights of all Indigenous women and girls, to uphold their memory, justice, reparation and dignity.

The resolution, amongst other things:

👉Recognizes the significant contribution of Indigenous women and girls to sustainable development, the protection of the environment, the preservation of Indigenous languages and cultures, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, maternal health and the promotion of Indigenous and traditional medicine;

👉Notes the CEDAW General Recommendation 39 on the rights of Indigenous Women and Girls;

👉Stresses the importance of the empowerment of Indigenous women and girls, their full, equal and meaningful participation in decision-making and with their free, prior and informed consent; and

👉Requests the Secretary-General to bring the present resolution to the attention of all, in order to raise awareness of the need to recognize and respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of all Indigenous women and girls, as set out in the

Access the resolution here: https://docs.un.org/A/80/L.11

View the webcast here: https://tinyurl.com/yp26x2ut

25/11/2025

In solidarity with the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, the San Youth Network (SYNet) firmly joins the UN Secretary-General’s campaign: UNiTE to End Digital Violence against All Women and Girls.

While we advocate for the safety of women universally, our campaign centers on the disproportionate and brutal reality faced by San women and girls. Their experience of Gender-Based Violence is compounded by systemic ethnic discrimination, where traditional misogyny intersects with racial marginalization.

​We strongly denounce the culture of entitlement that emboldens perpetrators, often male individuals, to commit acts of physical and sexual violence based on the abhorrent belief that San women are disposable property or that they may be disciplined for having ‘stepped out of line.’ This is a gross violation of fundamental human rights. SYNet is fully cognizant of these heinous treatments and is committed to continuous, fearless campaigning.

We pledge to deploy all available advocacy tools to dismantle impunity, ensuring that those who perpetrate violence against San women and girls are unequivocally held to account.

No woman or girl should ever face violence. For those targeted by intersectional prejudice, our fight for justice is absolute.

​ fans

15/11/2025

An Ancestral Scream for Justice: Solidarity with the Amazonian Peoples Against Exclusion and Militarisation at COP30.

​Statement from the San Youth Network (SYNet) on the Denied Participation and Securitisation of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.

​From the Kalahari, where our ancient steps trace the rhythm of the Earth, the San Youth Network (SYNet) sends its deepest ancestral solidarity to our Indigenous brothers and sisters of the Amazon, who have travelled far to defend their forest at the COP30 negotiations in Belém, Brazil. We have watched with profound shock and anger as the promises of an 'Indigenous COP' have been shattered by acts of exclusion, denial, and state-sanctioned intimidation. The struggle for climate justice is fundamentally a struggle for Indigenous rights, and when our voices are silenced in the heart of the Amazon, it is a crime against all life on Mother Earth.

​We utterly condemn the deliberate actions taken by the authorities, both the UN and the host Brazilian Government, to deny entry to Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, and the subsequent revocation of accreditation for Indigenous Leaders who chose the path of peaceful protest. Their crime was simply to demand what is rightfully theirs: a seat at the table and the right to meaningful participation in the dialogues and decisions that directly impact their territories and their very survival.

​The protest led by groups, including the courageous Munduruku people, was not an act of aggression, but a dignified, desperate, and necessary response to decades of systemic exclusion. When leaders, who are the world’s most effective custodians of biodiversity and climate stability, are blocked from the negotiation halls, it exposes the devastating hypocrisy of this entire process. You cannot claim to save the Amazon while shutting out its defenders. You cannot talk of climate solutions when the people who hold the ancestral blueprints are told to wait outside the gate. We see this exclusion as a profound act of colonial violence, designed to protect the comfort of corporate lobbyists and governments over the lives of frontline defenders.

CONDEMNATION OF MILITARY INTIMIDATION.
​We must address the alarming and unacceptable increase in the militarisation of the COP30 event. The deployment of heavily armed Brazilian military personnel, army, and police forces around the conference venue transforms a space meant for global cooperation and dialogue into a fortress of fear. These armed bodies, arrayed in a show of force, stand as a shield for extraction and destruction, not as protectors of the climate.
​We ask the Brazilian Government: Are you hosting a climate conference or preparing for war?

​The image of uniformed soldiers confronting peaceful Indigenous leaders, many in their traditional regalia and carrying their sacred demands, is a potent symbol of the Brazilian State’s prioritization of securitisation over justice. This excessive force does not create safety but imposes silence. It communicates clearly that dissent will be met with state power, and that the rights of Indigenous Peoples are secondary to the political optics of the conference. This action is a clear violation of the spirit of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and must cease immediately.

CONDEMNATION OF THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT'S HYPOCRISY
​The San Youth Network strongly condemns the actions and policy contradictions of the Brazilian Government. While the administration speaks eloquently about the importance of Indigenous Peoples in mitigating the climate crisis, its actions betray these words.

​We note the demands of our Amazonian siblings: the cancellation of environmentally destructive projects like the grain railway, the clear demarcation of Indigenous Territories, and the rejection of false solutions like deforestation carbon credits that can lead to further dispossession. Yet, as leaders call for forest protection, the Brazilian state continues to approve destructive industries, from offshore oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon to lithium mining without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) in Indigenous and traditional territories. This is not leadership but a profound betrayal.

​When the government praises Indigenous wisdom while simultaneously advancing resource exploitation on Indigenous lands, it practices a cruel form of green colonialism. It is forcing our Amazonian relatives to become sacrifice zones for the so-called 'green transition' of the Global North. We stand with our siblings in their rejection of this deadly duality: 'We can’t eat money. We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners, and illegal loggers.'

​OUR CALL TO THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY

​We, the Peoples of the Kalahari, who have endured our own struggles for land rights and recognition, call upon the international community, the UNFCCC, and all delegations to recognize the urgency of this moment.

​Reinstate All Accreditations: Immediately restore the credentials of all Indigenous Leaders who were penalised for exercising their right to peaceful protest.

​Demilitarise COP30: Remove the excessive military presence from the conference perimeter and ensure a safe, inclusive, and enabling environment for civil society.

​Ensure Meaningful Participation: Commit to establishing direct, formal, and effective participation mechanisms for Indigenous Peoples in all negotiation spaces, ensuring their voices translate into policy outcomes, not just photo opportunities.

​Uphold FPIC: Demand that the Brazilian Government uphold its constitutional and international obligations to secure Free, Prior, and Informed Consent before any extractive activity on or near Indigenous territories.

​The climate crisis is a fire, and the Amazon is the lungs of the world. The Indigenous Peoples are the fire-keepers. When you silence the keepers, the forest burns, and we all choke on the ashes. Our solidarity is a pledge: the fight for the Amazon is our fight, and we will continue to amplify the truth that there will be no climate solution without the full recognition of Indigenous sovereignty.

​San Youth Network (SYNet)
The People of the First Track