Minority Ogiek, Endorois push State to honour court decisions

Members of two minority ethnic groups, Ogiek and Endorois have renewed their push to compel the government to honour court decisions and recommendations of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to return their ancestral lands.

They also want the government to respect their fundamental rights on the ownership of the land by seeking their informed consent over any developments that it intends to carry on those areas.

In their twin letters, handed to the Attorney General yesterday, the communities highlighted the challenges arising from the noncompliance with court orders by the government stating that they have been subjected to abject poverty, environmental degradation has ensued and they have lost their cultural practices.

One of the letters, the Endorois community who claimed to have been evicted from the land around Lake Bogoria by the government of the day in 1973 to pave the way for a game reserve, said that the area is their ancestral home which provided them green pasture, ample clean drinking water, medicinal salt licks for their cattle, traditional herbal medicines, practiced bee-keeping activities and where they performed important rituals.

“As a result of the eviction, the Endorois were forced to move on arid land, where many of their cattle died and the sustenance of their way of life was not possible any longer,” the letter read in part.

The community said that in 2003, it filed a case before the ACHPR, and on November 25, 2009, the Commission made a ruling in their favour adding that the ruling was adopted by the AU Heads of States Summit on February 2, 2010 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.