African Court Rules Ogiek Land Rights Violated
Kenya has violated the forest-dwelling Ogiek people's rights to land, religion, culture, development and non-discrimination, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights ruled on Friday, in its first decision on indigenous people's rights.
The Ogiek live in the Mau Forest - Kenya's largest water catchment area - in the Rift Valley. But along with other hunter gatherer communities they have faced repeated evictions from the land since colonial times.
"By expelling the Ogieks from their ancestral land against their will, without prior consultation and without respecting the conditions of expulsion in the interests of public need, the respondent (Kenyan government) violated the right to land," the court ruled.
Matt Wade