Small Yaaku tribe wants to be made forest custodian (Laikipia County)


[Source: The Standard, by Jacinta Mutura]

Members of a near-extinct indigenous community want the Government to recognise them as legal owners of Mukogodo Forest in Laikipia North.

The Yaaku community members want Mukogodo to be handed back to them through a degazettement as a public forest and instead be registered under a Yaaku forest title.

The appeal came after a decision by the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights that found the Kenyan Government at fault for evicting the Ogieks and other communities as the original inhabitants of indigenous forests.

The ruling, which was delivered in Arusha in May 2017, compelled the Kenyan Government to recognise the forest-dwelling tribes and stop evicting them.

As a result, Environment and Forestry Cabinet Secretary Keriako Tobiko constituted a task force to conduct public hearings on the management of indigenous forests by communities.

Last week, the team met the Yaaku members in Mukogodo where they received a memorandum asking the Government to revoke the forest’s title as a protected area.

The Yaaku are among Kenyan communities that have been declared extinct. There are only seven people in Doldol, Laikipia North, who can fluently speak their language (Yakunte), which is among six languages in Kenya that have been classified as extinct by UNESCO.

There has been a long history of evictions of traditional hunter-gatherer communities that occupied lands in what have become legally gazetted Government protected areas.

The Yaaku claim to be part of this marginalisation that led to widespread suffering after the Government seized Mukogodo Forest without the participation of members.

In the memorandum signed by their representatives, the members said that since Mukogodo was turned into a forest reserve by the colonial government in 1932, the Yaaku people had been negatively affected because they depended entirely on the forest for survival.

If the Government agrees to their request and gives them complete ownership, the Yaaku said they are committed to reducing deforestation for agriculture, settlements and other land uses.

The task force led by Robert Kibugi will advise the Government on the management of forests by communities following the court’s ruling.

The team is expected to have looked at the submissions made by indigenous communities by October 24 when their mandate expires and give a report to Mr Tobiko.

[Full article: The Standard, by Jacinta Mutura]


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