An Amazigh Decade of struggles

Years of mobilization allow the Amazigh to move forward in their recognition in North Africa despite challenges and setbacks

21.05.201911.15h

An Amazigh protest in Rabat, 2019, to demand the release from jail of prisoners of the Rif movement. Autor/a: Javier Otazu / EFE

The Amazigh have been involved in massive mobilization and remarkable progress —such as the achievement of de facto self-government in Libya, official status for their language in Algeria, organization of parties and movements everywhere...— since a cascade of popular protests broke out in 2010 in all North African countries against authoritarian regimes there. Known worldwide as the Arab Spring, this wave of change has also been a true ⵎⵔⴰⵡ ⵏ ⵉⵙⴳⴳⵯⴰⵙⵏ ⵏ ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵏ / mraw n isggwasn imazighn: events in Kabylia, Rif, the Tuareg desert or in the Nafusa mountains are prominent examples.

In this series of articles, we take a trip to North African, Saharan and Sahelian states, seeking to portray recent developments and the current state of Amazigh struggles for the rights of women, the right to land, the right to culture and identity... The Amazigh people —one of the world’s largest not to have its own state— has been indigenous to North Africa for millennia, and since recent times also increasingly in the American and European diaspora. Policies of denial of rights and assimilation by colonial powers first, and North African states later, have not succeeded in deleting its existence.