Kenya: Stop evicting Sengwer Indigenous Peoples!

The Kenya Forest Service is yet again evicting the Sengwer community.

Kenya Forest Service guards are once again evicting Indigenous Sengwer people from their homes in Embobut forest. More than 600 families have been evicted according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. More than 400 houses have been burned down.

“It is not right to burn houses and claim this is conservation,” Elias Kimaiyo, a Sengwer conservationist and human rights activist, says.

The Sengwer have faced a series of forced evictions in recent decades. A 2010 report by the Sengwer Economic, Social and Cultural Programme reports more than 20 forced evictions since the 1980s. Since then the evictions have escalated.

The most recent evictions started on 18 April 2024. Kenya Forest Service deployed 170 guards to evict members of the Sengwer community, over a one-month-long operation called “Imarisha Msitu” Embobut. That translates as “Strengthen the Forest”.

Anthony Musyoka, Kenya Forest Service Head of Conservancy in North Rift region, who signed the letter announcing Operation Imarisha Msitu, has attempted to justify the evictions. On 7 May 2024, he told the Nation that,

“The squatters are involved in uncontrolled agricultural activities in the forest causing massive destruction to the ecosystem and destruction of the entire water towers.”

The Sengwer “should not be evicted”

On 19 March 2021, the Court of Appeal at Kisumu issued a conservatory order stating that,

. . . the status quo in Embobut forest as of today so remain in force, which means those who are in occupation of forest land as of today should not be evicted, but no new persons should be allowed to occupy forest land.

Musyoka argues that

“The conservatory orders were violated by the Sengwer and Marakwet clans, who began trooping back to the forest in 2021 to secure forest glades, and further subdivide the forest into individual paddocks for commercial hiring.”

On 29 April 2024, Paul K. Kitum, Chairman of Sengwer Council of Elders, wrote to Soipan Tuya, Cabinet secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Forestry. Kitum points out in his letter that “there are no new persons occupying our forest land, except those who the Forestry Department itself has allowed to invade our lands”.

Since May 2022, the Sengwer have raised the issue of outsiders practising “destructive farming” in a series of letters to the Kenyan authorities.

Kitum writes that,

In all these communications we were requesting Kenya Forest Services, Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, and Ministry of Interior to join hands with Sengwer Indigenous Peoples to restore, conserve and protect Embobut forest from encroachments and all illegal activities, while protecting our rights as indigenous peoples to live in the glades.

“We have viewed this invasion with immense dismay,” Kitum writes.

Kitum notes that,

It has been and it is the duty of the Kenya Forest Service and security agencies to ensure that none of these outsiders come into our forest which is yet to be awarded to us as our long overdue community land. The Kenya Forest Service and security agencies should not blame the court order for their own failure to keep our forest clear of invaders.

Kitum also notes that the Sengwer are not squatters, encroachers, or internally displaced persons. Instead the Sengwer are “the Indigenous Peoples the natives of Embobut forest”.

Kitum adds that,

Our ancestors lived here, the spirits of our ancestors are alive today in Kapkok, Koropkwen and Kaptirbai glades in Embobut forest, since time immemorial before Kenya became a British Colony in 1895.

Jennifer Morgan’s Kenya visit

On 10 May 2024, Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special representative for international climate policy met with Soipan Tuya, Kenya’s Cabinet secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, as part of the launch of a German-funded Hydrogen Diplomacy office in Nairobi.

Given her previous position as co-Executive Director of Greenpeace International, I’m sure that Morgan must have raised the issue of the ongoing illegal evictions with Soipan Tuya. I have asked Morgan about this, and about how Tuya replied. I look forward to posting her response in full.

The Sengwer are calling on Kenya Forest Service to stop evicting members of the Sengwer Indigenous Peoples living in glades in Embobut forest. The Sengwer are committed to work together with Kenya Forest Service to restore Embobut forest.

“We shall never give up our homeland,” Kitum writes.