ETHIOPIA-CULTURE-TRIBES-MURSI

Women from the Mursi tribe pose for a photo in the Mago National park near Jinka in Ethiopia's southern Omo Valley region on September 21, 2016. The Mursi are a Nilotic pastoralist ethnic group which number around 10,000 people in Ethiopia. Some Mursi women choose to wear a saucer lip plate (dhebi a tugoin). A girls lower lip is cut when she reaches the age of 15 or 16. The wound is then stretched over time to accomodate a large clay plate. The Mursi tribe are one of the few tribes left who continue this practise. The construction of a sugar factory in Mago National Park has begun to change the way of life for many Mursi as they begin to leave their traditional way of life to work at the factory. Human rights groups also report that the Mursi fear eviction by the Ethiopian government from a large area of the park altogether. The construction of the Gibe III dam, the third largest hydroelectric plant in Africa, and large areas of very "thirsty" cotton and sugar plantations and factories along the Omo river are impacting heavily on the lives of tribes living in the Omo Valley who depend on the river for their survival and way of life. Human rights groups fear for the future of the tribes if they are forced to scatter, give up traditional ways through loss of land or ability to keep cattle as globalisation and development increases. / AFP / CARL DE SOUZA (Photo credit should read CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images)