North Africa is home of the Amazigh people, also known as Berbers. Although widespread in the Maghreb region, the Berbers continue to suffer from a minority status everywhere in the region, with government often ignoring their basic ethnic rights demands at best, or even actively contributing to blocking any progress toward cultural and economic improvement.
Despite some tiny steps made here and there, from a questionable constitutional recognition to the launch of an embryonic linguistic program, the Berbers continue to suffer from harassment. If not always sanctioned by central governments, such harassments occur under the watchful but passive eye of the authorities. Two events in particular that have occurred recently point to the fragile state of Berber rights. The first occurred in the Algerian province of Ghardaia, the second in the Libyan town of Yefren.
