Displacement of Indigenous Peoples Across International Borders: Unseen Struggles in Africa

Authors

Keywords:

Transborder migration, transnational displacement, Indigenous Peoples, Africa, enslavemewnt, settler-colonial violence

Abstract

In the global discourse on migration and displacement, Indigenous Peoples often remain on the periphery. Their historical rootedness to ancestral lands and their unique sociocultural identities render them particularly vulnerable when confronted with cross border displacement. While the United Nations and its international legal frameworks acknowledge Indigenous rights (with instruments that are not legally binding), these international instruments are not only operational in silos, but they also often fail to account for the complexities surrounding cross-border displacement.

Author Biography

  • Veronica Fynn Bruey, Seattle University School of Law

    With nearly three decades of research and teaching in some 30 countries, Veronica Fynn Bruey is a multi-award winner and independent academic-activist affiliated with Seattle University School of Law. She holds six academic degrees: a PhD (ANU), an LLB (Honours) (London), LLM (Osgoode), MPH (Nottingham), BA (British Columbia, and BSc (Honours) (Ghana). She has authored five books, several book chapters, and journal articles published by Springer, Routledge, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Artha, and the Canadian Journal of African Studies. She has held academic positions at the University of Oxford, the University of Washington, University of Cape Coast, University of London, the Australian National University, Georgetown University, University of Witwatersrand, York University, and the University of British Columbia. She is the Director of Flower’s University Health Sciences Program; faculty affiliate at the Seattle University School of Law; founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of Internal Displacement; co-editor of Bloomberg’s Migration Displacement and Development Book Series; co-founder/lead of the Displaced Peoples’ Network, founder/lead of the Disrupting Patriarchy and Masculinity in Africa International Research Collaborative; and expert panellist of the International Commission of Missing Children. Currently, she is a co-founder/CEO of Tuki-Tumarankeh, a non-profit focused on Transnational Indigeneity, Displacement, and Patriarchy (t-IDP). She is a well sought after global speaker and the most recent recipient of the Law and Society’s Stan Wheeler Mentorship Award (2025); the Canadian Association of African Studies’ Pius Adesanmi Early Career Research Excellence Award (2024); and the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Association, Edmonton’s Distinguished Academic Early Career Award (2023) Dr Fynn Bruey is an Indigenous Liberian war survivor and a global migrant.

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Published

2025-10-29

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2025): Special Issue: Transnational Indigenous Displacement

Section

Editorials