Marginal People, Minimal Rights: Indigenous Fulbe Approaches to Human Rights and Sociopolitical Stigma in the Accra Metropolitan District of Ghana, West Africa

By Charlotte Stuart-Tilley

Hello, everyone! My name is Charlotte Stuart-Tilley and I am a 2nd-year student at Florida State University, majoring in French and International Affairs. I am part of Pi Delta Phi (the French Honor Society) and teach at the Alliance Française de Tallahassee, a francophone cultural organization. I have been studying French since I was fifteen years old, but I have always been interested in the world. As a really young child, I loved geography. As I grew up, I became interested in geology and environmental science before becoming immersed in global politics. Understanding how the world works, whether physically, socially, or structurally, has served as my motivator as I work to receive my education or achieve my career goals.

I dream of working in a human rights-related field, especially in relation to environmental justice. I spent my early high school years immersed in the climate justice movement and found the work very rewarding. I love camping, canoeing, and hiking, and feel connected to the local forests and rivers around Tallahassee. I also love to travel, whether via road trip or flight! So far, I have visited three countries outside of the United States, but by the end of the summer, I will have visited four! 

This summer, I will travel to Accra, Ghana, to work with Fulbe people. Fulbe are an indigenous, minority ethnic group who live across West Africa. Historically, Fulbe have been nomadic herders, although many Fulbe have settled in both cities and rural communities. As a nomadic group, they use an unwritten code of conduct called pulaaku (which means “responsibility”) to help them interact with a variety of different communities. Over the past few decades, state oppression and community violence against Fulbe people have worsened. Governments routinely deny Fulbe access to citizenship and other civil rights given to non-Fulbe people. Tensions over land and resources between Fulbe herders and non-Fulbe farmers have led to instances of violence from both groups.

My project asks, how do Fulbe describe the oppression that they face, in light of pulaaku? In other words, how do Fulbe people interpret and conceptualize their marginalization in their language, Pulaar? Language can powerfully shape our perspective of the world. Understanding how Fulbe conceptualize oppression can offer everyone an alternative framework of what human flourishing really means. To learn about Fulbe people's perception of oppression, I will interview Fulbe in Accra and record their interviews, and then translate and qualitatively analyze what they say. I anticipate that notions of pulaaku and seemtende (a word meaning “shame”) may appear in their descriptions.

So far, the work I have done for my project has been about preparing to leave for a two-month long trip to Ghana…vaccines, visas, paperwork…and thinking through the kinds of questions that I would like to ask my Fulbe interviewees. I am also preparing myself to live in Accra and trying to learn Twi, a language widely spoken in Ghana, in addition to Pulaar. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to go to Accra and learn about global human rights discourse through my research. My experience in Ghana will transform me and change my understanding of the world and I can’t wait!