Author: Emmanual Onyango
Date: January 23, 2007
Source: Kenya Times http://www.timesnews.co.ke/23jan07/nwsstory/news12.html

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Pastoralists drawn from six Kenyan districts were yesterday urged to sue a United Nations agency at the International Court for abuse of their land rights.

The pastoralists, drawn from Turkana, Garissa, Baringo, Marsabit, Tana River and Taveta districts, were urged by participants at the World Social Forum (WSF) to sue the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for approving the introduction and propagation of a plant which adversely affected their livestock and destroyed their vegetation.

The South American plant, prosopsis julioflora, was introduced to the six districts as part of an afforestation programme. But the pastoralists now claim the plant left most of their animals without teeth after periodic consumption. It is also said to have killed other plant species that grew in close proximity to it.

“We had taken FAO to an environmental court where it was found guilty for propagating a dangerous weed. But FAO decided that our court was too small for it. The minister in charge has also failed to gazette the weed as an obnoxious weed as he was instructed by the court,” one of the pastoralists told the Human Rights, Human Dignity caucus.

“We want the WSF to now tell us what we can do to ensure justice,” he added amid applause.

Jurisdiction

Session moderator Miloon Koshira, in his response, advised the pastoralists to seek the intervention of the International Court which had jurisdiction on the matter.

Mau Mau veterans, also present at yesterday’s session, similarly appealed to the WSF to support their efforts in getting compensation and an apology from the British Government for the atrocities committed to them during colonialism.

The veterans graphically recounted how the colonialists had rounded them up in camps, forced them into free labour and even sprayed them with pesticides.

“What is needed is not just compensation but reparations which involves resettlement, rehabilitation and compensation. But this has never been done to any indigenous or pastoralist group,” observed Joseph Schechia, a delegate from Egypt.

“International human rights agencies should also look into cases where the Kenyan post-independence Government subjected its own people to similar atrocities,” he added.