A United Nations human rights expert on Friday urged Botswana’s government to grant constitutional recognition and stronger protections to indigenous communities, citing longstanding discrimination against the San people.

The San are hunter-gatherers who were evicted from their ancestral land in the Kalahari, where there are diamond deposits.

They have lived in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years but are today mostly poor, marginalised and excluded from government welfare services.

“While the government has demonstrated openness and a willingness to engage, constitutional and legal recognition of indigenous peoples remains absent,” the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Albert Barume told journalists.

“Without such recognition, many communities cont

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