Some 6000-7000 indigenous people and other communities in Embobut Forest in the Cherangany Hills of the ElgeyoMarakwet County, in Kenya, are threatened with forced eviction.
For many years the Government has been trying to move the indigenous inhabitants of Embobut off their land by burning their homes. They have done this in the name of a fortress conservation approach which seeks to remove local people from their lands.
Recently, the President promised a small amount of money per family to what he called the ‘Evictees’ to move out of the forest. But the indigenous inhabitants of the forest refused to move and now face the threat of being evicted from their ancestral lands and deprived of their own indigenous means of subsistence integral to their forest life, identity, their characteristic sources of food, water, health and shelter and to their cultural survival as a people.
The Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) has launched an appeal to the Government and Parliament of Kenya and to the relevant UN organs to prevent the forced eviction of the indigenous communities and other people at Embobut, which would violate their human rights as well as international law.
Sign the appeal at https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Government_of_Kenya_Stop_forceful_and
_illegal_eviction_of_SengwerCherangany_communities, and see the appeal at
http://www.forestpeoples.org/topics/rights-land-natural-resources/news/2013/12
/urgent-appeal-against-forced-eviction-sengwercher
