700 Ogiek made homeless as Kenyan authorities destroy dozens of homes

Written on 02 November 2023. Posted in News

IWGIA has just received news that authorities from Kenya Forest Services and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers are currently destroying and setting fire to dozens of homes in Sasimwani village, Narok County. 700 Ogiek women, children and men have now been forcibly evicted and made homeless.

“We have nowhere else to go. This marks the end for us. Where will we put the children?” an Ogiek said standing amidst the ruins of her home.

This comes at the heals of the Ogiek finding out in late October that authorities were planning forced evictions with no prior warning, information and no plans for relocation or reparations.

It is also a clear violation of its legal obligations as adjudicated by the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, who on 23 June 2022, delivered a pioneering reparation judgment concerning the rights of the Ogiek Peoples to their ancestral land in the Mau Forest in Kenya.

The African Court unanimously dismissed all the objections from the Government of Kenya and the court ordered and placed in writing the following:

grants collective title to Ogiek through delimitation & demarcation;
requests full recognition of the Ogiek, including their language, cultural and religious practices, within one year of ruling;
recognises, respects and protects the rights of the Ogiek to be effectively consulted in accordance with their traditions and customs in respect of all development, conservation or development projects on Ogiek ancestral land;
requests full publication of both May 2017 judgment and reparations judgment in official gazette and a newspaper with wide national circulation, as well as on an official government website, within six months of the date of this judgment;
Kenyan government to pay 57,850,000 KSH (approx. 460,000 EUR) in material damages and 100,000,000 KSH (approx. 800,000 EUR) in moral damages to be paid into a Community Development Fund established within 12 months of the date of the judgment.

IWGIA calls on authorities to immediately stop these illegal evictions, repair all damage they have done to these families and abide by their legal obligations to respect the rights of the Ogiek.

Ogiek eviction 2 Nov 2023 OPDP 1