Sengwer call for end to human rights violations by Kenyan authorities following burning of 28 homes

The Sengwer Council of Elders, Amnesty, Katiba Institute, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Forest Peoples Programme and many other organisations have issued a powerful statement condemning these attacks.

The attack in Kapkok Glade, which took place on 10th July, has left dozens of people in the cold, with no shelter, and particularly vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus. It is the latest in a series of attempts to evict the Sengwer from their traditional lands, a situation which has escalated despite the establishment of the EU-funded Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme (WaTER).

The EU’s WaTER programme, which began in 2017, was intended to improve the ecosystems of Kenya’s principal water towers while benefitting the nearby communities, yet since its inception there has been a dramatic increase in the number of forced evictions, attacks and shootings of the Sengwer. In January 2018 the EU suspended the funding of the programme when a Sengwer man, Robert Kirotich, was shot dead by Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards while taking care of his cattle in the forest, and another man was seriously injured.

Forced evictions are prohibited by the Kenya Constitution, and in May of this year the government declared a moratorium on all evictions for the period of COVID-19 pandemic following calls by UN Special Rapporteurs, yet these bans have been roundly ignored by KFS. The UN has repeatedly condemned the KFS’ treatment of the Sengwer.

Such evictions additionally leave the forest more vulnerable to degradation and exploitation by outsiders, including by the KFS itself. The Service 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. Such evictions and harassment of the Sengwer is part of the KFS approach of removing those indigenous communities who wish to protect their ancestral forest lands.

The Sengwer are fully supportive of the resumption of the EU’s WaTER project funding, they simply ask that KFS and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry end their human rights violations, and respect Sengwer human rights. These rights include their community land rights, the recognition of which would enable to remain on their ancestral lands, living in the three natural glades, able to protect and restore their forests and their way of life that helps protect the forests. The Sengwer have their traditional rules and regulations (now documented) that they would like the KFS to adopt and help them implement.

There is nothing new about this approach although it would be new for Kenya. Trends towards empowering communities and especially traditional forest communities as owner-conservators is well advanced globally. This is applied in helping communities create Community Protected Forests on their own customary lands, and is also applied in transferring ownership of state lands to specific communities on strict conservation conditions. Many Community Forests, including in Europe have status as National Parks or Reserves. Ironically, Kenya’s law now provides for both opportunities, but its own forest service is still pursuing old strategies which have failed time and time again.

Sengwer hopes fade on rescuing the EU-WaTER programme, jeopardising UNDP funding

The EU will decide by 20th September whether to resume funding the WaTER project. In early July, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) facilitated meetings between the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the County Commissioner  and the Sengwer in an attempt to resolve the impasse and secure the resumption of the funding, but the negotiations broke down following attempted intimidation of the Sengwer by the County Commissioner (who chaired the Committee) and the UNDP representative.

One of the Sengwer representatives who participated in these meetings said, “[the] County commissioner was so intimidating throughout the two-day meeting… time by time he reiterated that we cannot allow people to go back to the forest and told KFS to make sure no one has gone back.” He explained that the Sengwer were ordered to switch off their phones and forbidden from taking photographs to document the meeting.

The location of one of the planned meetings was also changed at the last minute, moving it from a place where the Sengwer had agreed to meet and felt safe to one where they felt exposed. As a community member explained, KFS changed the meeting place from one where the Sengwer "felt safe and secure to express their view as they are directly affected by the WaTER project, instead of being lumped with majority communities in order to expose and suppress their voices."

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been positioning itself to take over from the EU as the key funder of forestry in Kenya – but these accusations of intimidation by the programme’s Kenya staff calls that into question, especially given UNDP’s commitment to safeguarding indigenous peoples’ rights.

A cycle of state eviction in the face of Sengwer calls for a win-win resolution

It may seem strange that this violence and harassment by KFS is happening at the same time as its parent Ministry, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, is supposed to be sitting down with the Sengwer to resolve the issues, but in fact this has happened many times before.

After burnings and violence by KFS over the Christmas period in 2017, human rights organisations organised a press conference in Nairobi on January 4 2018 where the Sengwer spoke of their experience. This resulted in the EU Ambassador meeting with the Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Environment as well as with KFS.

As a consequence, the Sengwer were invited to meet with the then EU Ambassador, the Cabinet Secretary at the Ministry and the County Governor in Eldoret on 10 January to negotiate a resolution of the situation. As Kiptuga, the leader of the Sengwer of Embobut, left his home to attend the meeting he was ambushed by KFS guards but managed to flee, avoid their gunshots, and attend the meeting.

During this meeting, the EU Ambassador called for an independent investigation of the evictions, and the County Governor said he would engage immediately in a dialogue. Rather than pausing its actions to allow a resolution of the situation, KFS once again intensified its human rights abuses, and this time a Sengwer community member peacefully going about his daily life in the forest was killed, The EU Ambassador condemned the killing by KFS in Kapkok Glade and stated:

 

"Yesterday's shooting took place after we had formally alerted Kenya's Government that the use of force by Kenya Forest Service guards in the Embobut Forest or elsewhere against innocent locals would lead the EU to suspend its financial support for conservation work on the country's water towers," noted Ambassador Dejak. "Accordingly, we are now suspending the support to the Water Towers Programme with the Government of Kenya."

 

Unfortunately it appears that the KFS's reaction to any prospect of a win-win solution and dialogue is to harden its stance and instead heighten the levels of violence to try and intimidate the community into not attending meetings that might help resolve the situation. KFS took the same approach of burning community homes back in 2015 when the World Bank convened a high-level Dialogue in Eldoret after the failure of its own Natural Resource Management Project (NRMP) at Embobut. The NRMP project had started out with the intention of helping secure Sengwer ancestral land rights as part of its way of securing their forests, but had ended up – in the estimation of the Bank’s own Inspection Panel – simply strengthening KFS’s ability to use violence against people.

What the Sengwer are calling for

Either the Ministry has been unaware of the extent to which KFS is out of control and now needs to remove them from operating any forests where there are indigenous communities, or the Ministry is in control of KFS, in which case it is responsible for their actions. Either way, this pattern of KFS using violence to sabotage negotiations demonstrates that it is they who are responsible for stopping the resumption of the EU WaTER project funding – and thereby also putting future support from the UNDP and others at risk – not the Sengwer.

We can only assume that the Cabinet Secretary at the Ministry has been unaware of the consistent way in which KFS has sought to perpetuate violence and conflict, rather than support a resolution based on dialogue. We can only hope that, on being made aware of the true situation, the Cabinet Secretary will recognise the Sengwer are his allies in protecting the forests, will end KFS’s violence, and ensure that the human rights – including the community land rights - of the Sengwer indigenous people and other traditional forest peoples in Kenya are recognised, and recognised as the basis for securing their rights and their forests.

The Sengwer demand an end to all violations and that those responsible be brought to justice.

The Sengwer are simply asking for real – not sham – dialogue that can move towards resolving a situation that otherwise perpetuates the cycle of KFS violence towards the community. Such a resolution can be achieved by recognising that securing the forests depends on securing Sengwer community rights, and through signalling a willingness to work with the Sengwer by making changes to ensure real dialogue.

The changes proposed by the Sengwer would mean that the current Embobut Forest Committee that is supposed to be managing this dialogue is no longer chaired by a County Commissioner who denies the Sengwer exist as a people, and no longer managed by a representative from UNDP who denies Sengwer rights to their lands. Instead the Sengwer ask of the current Embobut Forest Committee:

1. That it is led by an expert or institution that both the Ministry and the Sengwer recognise as independent,
2. That its proceedings are filmed, recorded and made transparent, and
3. That it has a joint secretariat comprising of both a Sengwer and a Ministry representative.