Imminent forced eviction by Kenya threatens indigenous communities’ human rights and ancestral forests

The Kenyan government has sent police troops to Embobut forest area (in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Western Kenya) to forcefully evict thousands of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sengwer and Cherangany communities from their ancestral forestlands. The eviction is expected to commence as early as tomorrow.

Reports from community members in Embobut tell of a chaotic situation, as people are threatened and are fleeing their homes with their children and belongings in fear of their safety. 150 police and forest guards including also 30 General Service Unit riot police are massing to carry out the evictions from the three locations of Tangul, Kipsitono and Maron near the forest. More troops may join.

Such a forced eviction would not only be a severe violation of the Kenyan Constitution and international law on human rights, and on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, but would also be in contempt of an injunction secured at the High Court in Eldoret which forbids any such evictions until the issue of these communities rights to their land is resolved. Article 63 (d) of the Kenyan Constitution recognises the rights of communities to own ancestral lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherers.

An International Appeal from environmental and human rights organisations from Kenya, Africa and all around the world highlights this violation of these communities’ rights. The Appeal was sent on Monday to the Kenyan President and Government as well as to the United Nations authorities concerned with Human Rights and biodiversity, in order to protect the rights of the indigenous communities.

The forced eviction of these indigenous communities is illegal - and even more so if it is carried out through violent acts such as the burning of homes, school uniforms, books and means of livelihood. Such forced evictions have been carried out repeatedly (most recently in May 2013 despite the interim injunction), but this time the Government is serious about permanently removing communities (and this, despite not having undertaken any meaningful attempt to secure peoples free prior and informed consent to such a process).

Evicting these indigenous communities of Embobut against their will from their ancestral lands would be a severe human rights violation. One that the government has tried to justify through public misinformation:

• While the government says that all people to be evicted, including the indigenous inhabitants of the area, are ‘squatters’, the indigenous inhabitants of the area are the opposite of ’squatters’.

• While the government claims it is evicting the indigenous communities in order to protect the forest biodiversity, Kenya’s official commitments (internationally recognised by the CBD, IUCN, etc.) require the state to secure the forest biodiversity by supporting – not destroying - practices adapted to its local regeneration, including the practices of indigenous communities which have sustained their ancestral forests for centuries.(1)

• The government says it has given compensation for the ‘evictees’, but it is recognised internationally and under the Kenyan Constitution that due compensation for evicting indigenous communities from their ancestral lands requires due procedures of consultation and the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of the indigenous communities. Such consultation has not been undertaken, and such consent has not been given. Instead, there has been conflicting advice from Government authorities with some saying (off the record) that the money is given as compensation for the harm caused by past evictions and burnings of homes; while others saying (on the record) that all inhabitants have to leave. If some indigenous inhabitants have accepted compensation for the past harms they suffered in the earlier violent and harsh displacements that certainly does not mean agreement to being forcibly evicted again.(2)

Instead of evicting indigenous communities from their ancestral lands without due consultation, consent and legally approved compensation the government needs to sit down with the communities to find a way of protecting their rights to care for their forest lands in compliance with their traditional indigenous knowledge, innovations and practices and through that to support them to protect their forest. This is required by Kenya’s constitution, including in constitutional provisions that make Kenya’s commitments under international law an integral part of the law of Kenya. This includes laws in the UN and African regional human rights systems, as well as relevant law on conservation of biodiversity and environment. The State is responsible for respecting the life, culture, will and knowledge of Embobut’s indigenous communities, whose life has been adapted through centuries to gain their livelihoods from the regeneration of the Embobut forests and from respecting and protecting these forests on which they depend.

The forced eviction in Embobut would violate not only the rights of the indigenous communities, but also the many human rights of other vulnerable inhabitants of the area. It is also wrong to treat as illegal ’squatters’ those people who have moved into Embobut because they have lost their homes from the effect of landslides or due to past electoral violence, and who therefore have had no place to live. The government is responsible for securing the safety, homes, livelihoods and human rights of these already displaced vulnerable victims as well. This requires much more than giving them a small amount of money and blaming them for not surviving on it.

In conjunction with the authorised UN agencies and international community, but above all through dialogue with the communities themselves, the government and Parliament can duly fulfil Kenya’s constitutional and international obligations on indigenous communities’ rights, and on their continued conservation and sustainable use of the biodiversity of their ancestral forest lands (see the Appeal). The government needs to determine with all the inhabitants who is willing to leave (and on the basis of what financial or other support), and who is willing to stay (and what sustainability bylaws they wish to codify to ensure their continued use of their forest lands is sustainable for themselves and their future generations).

See article

Sengwer of Kenya Forcibly Evicted from Ancestral Forest

The Sengwer People of the Embobut Forest in Kenya, one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer peoples in East Africa, are being forcibly evicted from their lands by guards from The Kenya Forest Service, with support from the Kenya police. Despite a court injunction forbidding the eviction, thousands of Sengwer People now face an all too familiar loss of homes, food stores and belongings.

Rolling slopes in Kenya’s western highlands, the Sengwer have lived in and cared for the Cherangany Hills for centuries. However, since 2007, when the World Bank began disbursing funds to the Kenya Forest Service for a Natural Resource Management Project (NRMP) the Sengwer’s legacy has been threatened.

Acting in the name of protecting the forest and safeguarding urban water supplies, the Kenya Forest Service sets fire to Sengwer homes and food stocks almost every year (2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013). The current evictions are taking place under the same banner.

Providing some context, the Bretton Woods Project observes,

In January 2013, representatives from [the Sengwer] submitted a complaint to the Inspection Panel, the Bank’s accountability mechanism, claiming the Bank had violated its policies on indigenous peoples and involuntary displacement. They argue[d] the NRMP project changed the border of the Cherangany forest reserve so that it included areas where indigenous peoples live. This automatically made them a target for eviction by the Kenya Forest Service.

The Bank did warn in its Indigenous Peoples Plan that the project would end in failure unless the Sengwer’s communal land rights were secured. However, that warning was never acted upon.

Following the complaint to the Inspection Panel, in March 2013, the Eldoret High Court issued an injunction forbidding the Kenya Forest Service guards and the police from carrying out any further evictions or destruction of homes. The injunction was renewed in November 2013.

On Jan. 18, 2014, the Judge at Eldoret High Court issued another order that the police were to arrest anyone breaching the injunction. However, with the police providing support to the Kenya Forest Service guards who are now carrying out the evictions, no one appears prepared to enforce the order.

In addition to breaching the High Court’s injunction, the evictions are a severe violation of the Kenyan Constitution, as well as international law concerning human rights, biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Article 63 (d) of the Kenyan Constitution recognizes the rights of communities to own ancestral lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherers.

In a story from Survival International, Sengwer spokesman Yator Kiptum emphasizes:

Embobut is the communal land of the Sengwer, as the government itself has recognized in the past. Sengwer are neither squatters nor internally displaced persons, but an indigenous community living within their ancestral lands and territories, and Embobut forest is part of it.

One Sengwer woman came out of hiding and told the Forest Peoples Programme:

All school uniforms, cooking pans, water containers, cups were burnt. Now the children have to stay home while I find uniform and books. The children are very upset because we have lost everything. The children and elderly people will end up getting pneumonia because we don’t have anything to cover ourselves at night.

In efforts to justify the actions, the Kenya government has labeled the Sengwer as squatters in the forest, and alleged that they have accepted money in order to relocate. President Kenyatta, changing tactics, came to Embobut in November and offered 400,000 Kenyan shillings to a list of 2,784 “beneficiaries,” whose names have not been made public. These included some of the indigenous Sengwer, as well as internally displaced people who are mostly landslide victims, and those who have land elsewhere but have seen Sengwer land as available to cultivate.

Forest Peoples Programme comments,

The Kenya government takes a colonial approach to forest conservation, evicting those who have protected their forests for centuries. It replaces them with the Kenya Forest Service whose track record at nearby Mount Elgon demonstrates that when the KFS is in control then indigenous forest is fast destroyed, as profit-making plantations and agriculture replace the biodiversity of the indigenous forest.

In December 2013, the Forest Peoples Programme along with more than 60 other international conservation and human rights organizations launched an appeal to the Government and Parliament of Kenya to stop the forced and illegal evictions of the Sengwer Indigenous Peoples. They renewed this appeal to President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta on January 14.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, has since urged the Government of Kenya “to ensure that the human rights of the Sengwer indigenous people are fully respected, in strict compliance with international standards protecting the rights of indigenous peoples. Any removal of Sengwer people from their traditional lands should not take place without adequate consultations and agreement with them, under just terms that are fully protective of their rights”.

https://intercontinentalcry.org/sengwer-kenya-forcibly-evicted-21865/

Back