Skewed Conservation Policy and the State Validation of Land Dispossession of Indgenous Peoples in Kenya

Abstract

Protected Areas are an existential threat to the existence and survival of the Indigenous Peoples of Kenya. From the colonial era to the present, Indigenous Peoples have had to endure a century of land and natural resources dispossession despite regime changes. It is agonizing to note that some areas currently occupied by indigenous peoples have been registered as government lands. Thus, the indigenous occupiers become squatters in lands they inherited from their ancestors and are possible subjects of violent evictions by Kenya Forest Service Rangers and Kenya Wildlife Service, who are the agents of government with the mandate to enforce conservation measures. Indigenous lands registered as protected areas were not subjected to free prior and informed consent (FPIC) nor were the Indigenous owners compensated as required by law. This note will demonstrate how some indigenous communities, through support from human rights lawyers and NGOs, have successfully litigated against such injustices. Still, the government of Kenya has remained unresponsive in implementing recommendations and judgments calling for the restitution of illegal land deprivation.This paper documents instances in which protected areas, created in lands overlapping with unceded Indigenous Peoples’ territories and forming part of ongoing and previous court litigations, have been targeted by the government to implement mega infrastructural projects and private ecotourism. This paper thus brings to the fore the irony of the government of Kenya using conservation to justify the deprivation and discrimination of Indigenous Peoples' right to property, development, and equality before the law.