This report is based on a month’s ethnographic research on Sengwer women’s experience of eviction in Embobut forest - Marakwet County. It focuses on gender issues and how women from hunter-gatherer indigenous peoples, i.e. the Sengwer are affected by forced evictions.
Forest peoples and indigenous organisations in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America have made considerable progress over the last year in their work to secure their rights.
Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) has continued to support forest peoples’ efforts to gain ownership of their lands, aiming to ensure that their voices are heard across the complex political and social global landscape as they assert their human rights.
Bogotá, April 25: A new report “Deforestation and Indigenous Peoples Rights in the Colombian Amazon” co-published by social justice and environmental NGO DEDISE and Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) underlines the critical role of secure land and territorial rights and traditional knowledge in sustaining one of the most culturally and biologically diverse forests on the planet.
El Asegurar los derechos territoriales y el conocimiento tradicional de los pueblos indígenas son fundamentales para las iniciativas post conflicto destinadas a salvar la Amazonía colombiana y lograr un desarrollo sostenible
Nearly all forests across the globe are inhabited. The peoples who live there have customary rights and have developed ways of life and traditional knowledge that are attuned to their forest environments. Yet, forest policies commonly treat forests as empty lands controlled by the State and available for development, colonisation, logging, plantations, dams, mines, oil wells, gas pipelines and agribusiness.
Introduction to the Toolkit on the Inter-American Human Rights System for Indigenous Women
Author: Ellen-Rose Kambel / Editors: Valerie Couillard and Andrea Galindo
Communities seeking redress for their lands, grabbed for pulpwood plantations in Sumatra, are let down by resolution process, reveals new report.
Forest Peoples Programme 31 October, 2014
The October 2014 issue of the FPP’s newsletter carries stories about forest rights and forest wrongs, as conflicting interests and approaches battle to decide the fate of the forests and forest peoples in different countries.
This was a year of positive change for the Ogiek people of Mount Elgon in Kenya. They began a powerful community process to protect their lands, writing down their traditional bylaws, tackling illegal charcoal burners and drafting provisions for the Community Land Bill, Wildlife Bill and Forest Act. Constructive relationships with conservation bodies and politicians led to better conditions for the Ogiek communities, including government-funded primary schools.
Ce guide illustre les aspects clé des lois et des droits fonciers essentiels pour garantir la propriété et la contrôle des terres et des ressources par les communautés, exprimés également par le concept de la sécurité foncière des terres et des ressources. Il explique comment identifier et créer des possibilités de réforme législative et présente des exemples de réformes ayant eu lieu dans différents pays africains.
Le présent guide n’est pas exhaustif, mais vise à :
This Guide, produced by FERN, the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), ClientEarth and the Centre for Environment and Development (CED), explains key aspects of law and land rights that are important for securing community ownership and control of land and resources – also referred to as secure land and resource tenure. It explains how to identify and create opportunities for law reform and offers examples of reforms that have taken place in several African countries.
This Guide is not exhaustive but aims to:
The Kenyan government has sent Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards, with police support, to Embobut Forest in the Cherangany Hills to forcibly and illegally evict thousands of Sengwer indigenous people from their ancestral forest lands and burn their homes and belongings to the ground.
By carrying out these evictions and burnings, the Kenyan government is completely ignoring the orders of its own courts, its Constitution, and its international legal commitments. It is acting as though it is above the law.
The Kenyan government has sent police troops to Embobut forest area (in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Western Kenya) to forcefully evict thousands of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sengwer and Cherangany communities from their ancestral forestlands. The eviction is expected to commence as early as tomorrow.
This shocking report provides the first detailed field study of communities’ experiences with the Indonesia government’s 2 million hectare Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estare (MIFEE) project. The study shows that MIFEE is undermining local self-sufficiency, throwing into doubt the government’s national policy on food security based on promoting large-scale agricultural enterprises at the expense of local communities.
Key findings of the report:
Instances of conflict between communities and large-scale agricultural concessions have recently brought the issues of land and human rights into focus in Liberia, and throughout Africa. Rural communities in Grand Cape Mount, north-western Liberia, have been at the sharp end of a dispute with Malaysian oil palm giant Sime Darby, that received national and international attention.