Published in Foreign Affairs
By Darren Walker
In the forests of Jambi Province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, more than half the indigenous Orang Rimba community lacks government-issued identification cards. Until mid-August, that meant its members could not receive COVID-19 vaccines, since the government required anyone seeking a dose to have a state-issued ID number. Even now that the rule has been changed, many Orang Rimba have not had a chance to get a shot, because like most indigenous people in Indonesia, they live in a remote area, hours away from the nearest vaccination site.
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