A senator and three members of parliament were arrested on January 29, 2015 by Criminal Investigation officials in Nairobi after being required to write detailed accounts regarding a peaceful demonstration that turned ugly when police opened fire, killing at least one person and injuring scores of others in Narok County.
The right to health is the most basic of human rights, argues Indigenous Maasai scholar Ben Koissaba, of Kenya, in conclusion to his participation at the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples that took place September 2014 in New York. “[It’s] fulfillment is both a precondition to, and a by-product of, the enjoyment of all other rights,” he explains. In a recent publication, Koissaba evaluated progress towards the right to health for Indigenous Peoples of Africa. Around the world, Indigenous Peoples suffer from greater illness and poorer quality of care than other groups.
On September 4, 2014, the African Governors of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) met in Khartoum, Sudan, In addition to commenting on issues of poverty, finance, and infrastructure, they “not[e] with deep concern that the proposed Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework of the Wo
By Ben Ole Koissaba, PhD Student, Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, Clemson University, South Carolina
Ben Koissaba’s “E-Learning Principles and Practices in the Context of Indigenous Peoples: A Comparative Study” focuses on how access to e-technology has bolstered the agency and global presence of Indigenous People. He draws his assertions from case studies in Australia, the United States, and Kenya.
By Ben Koissaba
Reminiscent of what happened to the Maasai community in Narasha in 2013, Maasai pastoralists in Kedong, Akira and Suswa are glaring at massive evictions arising from a group of concessions awarded to several companies including Hyundai, Toshiba, Sinopec and African Geothermal International (AGIL) for the purposes of developing geothermal projects on the Maasai lands.
On April 7, 2014, in a magistrate courtroom in Nanyuki, Kenya, Samburu community members and their supporters battling for their land rights in Laikipia went head to head with African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), President Moi, and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) as they attempted to restore the criminal case against the Samburu tribe. Those in attendance were a number of Samburu elders, Lempaa Suyianka for Katiba Institute, Ngigi for Prof Yash, and Carol Mburugu for Kituo Cha Sharia.
Katiba Institute, established to promote the understanding and implementation of Kenya’s new constitution, has reported that there has been an increase in human rights violations in the Samburu communities of Laikipia, Kenya.
After being in the cold for over five months courtesy of government-sponsored forced evictions and because of broken promises for compensation from the Kenyan President and his deputy, the Maasai community of Narasha is living with uncertainty for the future. According to community leaders, the current actions by KenGen and the committee appointed to look into ways of settling the dispute and compensate those whose houses were razed down by fire in July 201
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.