Join ELQ and BJIL for a conversation about indigenous rights and land dispossession in the context of nature preservation. [ROOM CHANGE: THIS EVENT WILL NOW BE IN ROOM 132]

John Rider explores a Ugandan community’s international campaign to reclaim access to its native lands.
The article centers on a group in Uganda known as the Benet Mosopisyek, who were displaced from their native land by the Ugandan government after it was converted into a nature reserve. It explores how the Benet Mosopisyek have undertaken an international campaign to attain recognition as an Indigenous people, with the ultimate aim of reclaiming access to their ancestral territories. The piece engages with themes of displacement, indigeneity, and international solidarity, as well as the colonial logics of “fortress conservation.”

John Rider graduated from Harvard Law School in 2025, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. During law school, he worked with Minority Rights Group International in its Uganda and London offices, where he was involved in strategic litigation efforts in the African Great Lakes region. His experience supporting litigation challenging fortress conservation–related violence in East Africa and the Great Lakes region helped inspire this paper. Rider has also published a digital article on conservation-related indigenous displacement in East Africa with the Georgetown Journal of International Law.

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