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News and Feature Story

Insecurity Cause For Worry Among Maa Pastoralists

The spate of insecurity in Laikipia, Samburu, Baringo (Ilchamus) and Transmara indicates the authorities' apparent indifference and inertia towards Maa pastoralist communities in Kenya rendering their lives insignificant

That a section of pastoralists can be on the rampage maiming, murdering and driving away whole herds of Ilchamus, Samburu and Maasai livestock while their targets (maa speakers) are disarmed and rendered vulnerable is tantamount to a declaration of annihilation of Maa pastoralists.

The predominantly vanquished and subdued Maa pastoralists continue to pay the ultimate price due to security breakdown and disenfranchisement.
The world community bears the responsibility of seeking the root causes of these blatant abuses and ensuring justice for all.
The government must also stop clinging to the colonial blinkers and perception that consider pastoralists a menace and a threat to peace.

Maasai Indigenous Peoples And The Millenium Development Goals

By Michael Tiampati

The Millennium Development Goals commonly called the MDGs if implemented have the potential to stimulate development for indigenous communities and safeguard their rights.

However, in Kenya the MDGs remain largely a pipedream across the indigenous Maasai people's landscape and shall remain so if drastic measures are not taken to address the existing skewed playing field prevalent in Kenya and the fact that there seems to be little if any action being taken for the realization of these goals.

Maasai indigenous peoples in Kenya are confronted by multi faceted challenges arising from social exclusion and marginalization. As such, they lack the full access and enjoyment of their full range of rights at the national level despite the existence of laws and acts of parliament which provides for these rights due to the prevailing policies that fail to incorporate indigenous communities in all development initiatives.
The century long marginalization which has facilitated exclusion of Maasai indigenous peoples from processes that impact directly on their socio-cultural and economic aspects of their lives. This in turn has been a catalyst for exploitation, land dispossessions and outright neglect and discrimination.

For the MDGs to be realized in these lands an overhaul of the existing prejudicial policies and mentalities ought to be eradicated as a prelude to any meaningful implementation. In Kenya, nothing in the way of implementation of the MDGs is evident despite the fact that government reports have indicated that implementation of these goals has already commenced.

Maasai Indigenous peoples feel that nothing in the said government implementation is geared towards the realization of these goals by 2015 within their territories and there are justified concerns that the communities may after all not reap the envisioned benefits.

As such, it is incumbent on the United Nations Human Rights Commission to allocate and channel resources in a fair manner to ensure that indigenous peoples benefit from these goals as was envisioned on the onset.
It should lay emphasis on such communities as Maasai peoples in the Kenyan context so that the colonial tragedy that has haunted and disenfranchised them for one long century does not replicate itself again at this point in time.
We therefore call upon the global community and the United Nations to make concerted efforts to ensure the realization of MDGs among the Maasai within the stipulated time frame and in a manner that is acceptable and worthwhile to the indigenous peoples.