Kenya case study: Forced evictions in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic leaves Sengwer community with no homes

This article is part of a series on the impacts of COVID-19 on indigenous and tribal peoples. The full policy report, “COVID-19 and indigenous and tribal peoples:  the impacts and underlying inequalities” which features 10 case studies, including this one, is available here.

By Marie Joyce Godio, through the help of Milka Chepkorir, Peter Kitelo, Justin Kenrick, and Elias Kimaiyo

Despite the Kenyan government declaring a moratorium on all evictions for the period of COVID-19 in May 2020, the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards have been conducting a series of violent evictions in the Sengwer community. On 10 July, they burned 28 homes in Kapkok Glade, leaving dozens of members of the Sengwer community in the cold, with no shelter, and particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus [1]. And, at the start of September, they burned 31 more homes. 

The KFS has long been conducting violence against the Sengwer community to force them to abandon their ancestral lands. The violent evictions have escalated with the establishment of the EU-funded Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme (WaTER). 

 

"What is happening now is so dangerous, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.” - Elias Kimaiyo, a Sengwer community leader in Embobut

 

Forced evictions are prohibited by the Kenyan Constitution and, yet, despite the moratorium and calls by UN Special Rapporteurs, the KFS continue with their evictions without any consequence or accountability. The UN has repeatedly condemned the KFS’s treatment of the Sengwer.

The evictions also leave the forest more vulnerable to degradation and exploitation by outsiders, including by the KFS, which has a history of exploiting and destroying indigenous forest. The Kenyan government’s own logging taskforce judged KFS to have been exploiting and destroying the very forests it is supposed to protect. Evictions and harassment of the Sengwer are part of the KFS approach to removing indigenous communities who wish to protect their ancestral forest lands.

The Sengwer have been fully supportive of the resumption of the EU WaTER project, which was suspended due to the increase in the number of forced evictions, attacks and shootings of the Sengwer since the project’s inception in 2016. But they were calling for the KFS and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to first end their human rights violations against them and to respect their human rights. These rights include their community land rights, the recognition of which would enable them to remain on their ancestral lands, living in the three natural glades, able to protect and restore their forests and their way of life, which helps protect the forests. The Sengwer have documented their traditional rules and regulations and they have been proposing to use them as the basis for conserving their forests, with support from KFS.

The EU WaTER programme negotiations between the Ministry of the Environment and the Sengwer community were being handled by the United Nations Development Programme, which has been failing in its role, particularly because it appears to be supportive of the Ministry’s eviction approach, a clear contradiction of the UN’s indigenous peoples policy and safeguards. 

 

"The recent burning of houses in July when negotiations were ongoing and in September is a way to force and intimidate the Sengwer to lift the suspension of the EU funds to the WaTER project without the Kenyan government addressing the root causes.” - Elias Kimaiyo

 

He identified the root causes as the utmost disregard of the government to Sengwer’s human rights, particularly the right to their ancestral forest, and the continuing impunity of the KFS. 

On 24 September 2020 the EU’s contractual deadline (for enabling the WaTER project to proceed) passed without the government having agreed to a clear rights-based approach to forest conservation. The EU therefore cancelled the project, but held out the prospect of renewed programmatic funding under its Green New Deal initiative if such a programme can learn from the WaTER project experience. 

[1] https://www.forestpeoples.org/en/sengwer-call-for-end-human-rights-violations-kenyan-authorities-after-burning-of-28-homes

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25901&LangID=E

[3] https://www.forestpeoples.org/en/un-human-rights-system/press-release/2018/indigenous-rights-must-be-respected-during-kenya-climate 

[4] http://www.friendsofkarura.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Final-Report_29Apr2018_17h.pdf 

[5]

[6] https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kenya_en/86239/European%20Union%20WaTER%20towers%20programme%20now%20comes%20to%20an%20end