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Call to Sever Ties with Tanzanian Government Over Latest Human Rights Abuses Against the Maasai
Open Letter from the Oakland Institute and Survival International to UNESCO WHC & IUCN
To: Lazare Eloundou Assomo, Director UNESCO World Heritage
CC: Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director General
Tim Badman, Director, IUCN World Heritage Program
Muhammad Juma, Chief of Africa Unit, UNESCO World Heritage
ICOMOS Secretariat
Subject: Call to Sever Ties with Tanzanian Government Over Latest Human Rights Abuses Against the Maasai
Dear Director Lazare Eloundou Assomo,
We are writing in light of the latest violence unleashed on the Maasai communities living in the Loliondo division of Ngorongoro district by the Tanzanian security forces. On June 8, 2022, the Tanzanian government initiated the demarcation of 1,500 km2 of land that it intends to turn into a game reserve, which would trigger mass evictions of Maasai living in legally registered villages within Loliondo. This action has led to widespread violence against the Maasai by security forces, which has left at least 31 people wounded by live ammunition and other injuries while one police officer was allegedly killed by an arrow. A total of twenty-three citizens (including 9 ward councilors) have been arraigned before the Resident Magistrate’s Court of Arusha and charged with the murder of the policeman.
Injured Maasai, including high numbers of women and children, have fled to Kenya to seek medical treatment and the government continues to crack down on those who are attempting to share information regarding the violence. Despite this resistance from local communities living on this land, Prime Minister Majaliwa announced the demarcation exercise had been completed.
This latest travesty is a continuation of past efforts to evict Maasai from their ancestral lands in Loliondo for safari tourism and trophy hunting. The United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Otterlo Business Company (OBC) — which runs hunting excursions for the country’s royal family and their guests — will reportedly control commercial hunting in the area despite the company’s past involvement in several violent evictions of the Maasai, including in 2017, burning of homes, and the killing of thousands of rare animals in the area.
There has been extensive condemnation of this violence and forced evictions of the Maasai by numerous organizations and coalitions. On June 13, 2022, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights strongly condemned(link is external) the violence and urged the government to halt the eviction and open an independent investigation. On June 14, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues expressed(link is external) “its profound concern” over the ongoing evictions” and called “on the government of Tanzania to comply with the provisions recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and other relevant international human rights instruments, and ensure the right of the Maasai to participate in decision-making, considering that their land in Loliondo for safari tourism, trophy hunting and “conservation” will affect their lives and territory.”
On June 15, nine United Nations Special Rapporteurs called(link is external) on the Tanzanian government to “immediately halt plans for relocation of the people living in Loliondo and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and begin consultations with the Maasai Indigenous Peoples, including direct contact with the Ngorongoro Pastoral Council, to jointly define current challenges to environmental conservation and best avenues to resolve them, while maintaining a human rights-based approach to conservation.” Finally, on June 19, IUCN issued a statement(link is external) on the human rights violations in Loliondo, sharing that it was “deeply concerned.”
Given these developments are occurring alongside the threat of eviction faced by tens of thousands of Indigenous residents of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the government’s shocking display of violence against its own citizens and patently false denial of responsibility cannot be ignored. We have previously written to your office warning of plans to evict Maasai from the NCA and the inadequacy of relocation sites. These latest rights violations in Loliondo demonstrate that the government does not hesitate to resort to violence, in violation of its national and international obligations, towards the realization of its plans.
The government’s blatant disregard for Indigenous lives and international human rights law calls for immediate and decisive action from the UNESCO WHC and IUCN. Continued inaction on your part makes you complicit. The UNESCO WHC has failed to ensure respect for the rights of Indigenous residents. Therefore, Ngorongoro should be delisted as a World Heritage Site and all ties between the UNESCO WHC and IUCN with the government should be immediately severed.
Sincerely,
Anuradha Mittal
Executive Director
The Oakland Institute
Fiore Longo
Director, France & Spain
Survival International
Open Letter to UNESCO WHC & IUCN June 24, 2022Related posts:
URGENT ALERT – Heavy Police Presence in Loliondo as Threats of Mass Evictions of the Maasai Intensify
Justice Denied: East African Court of Justice Grants Tanzanian Government Impunity to Trample Human Rights of the Maasai
Tanzanian Government Continues Violent Repression of the Maasai in Loliondo Despite Worldwide Condemnation
Tanzanian Government’s Sustained Campaign Against the Maasai in Loliondo and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
This July, the World Bank Group celebrates its 80th anniversary. But for women and communities across the Global South there is nothing to celebrate. In this op-ed originally published by Devex on 19 July 2024, three close partners of the Coalition (Titi Soentoro from Aksi!, gender, social and ecological justice” – Indonesia; Verónica Gostissa from Asamblea Pucara – Argentina; and Mbole Veronique from Green Development Advocates – Cameroon) share stories from their countries showing how the World Bank is exacerbating the exact problems it claims to solve.
This July, the World Bank Group celebrates its 80th anniversary. But for us — women rights defenders from Asia, Africa, and Latin America — there is nothing to celebrate.
While the World Bank is proudly presenting its successes in fighting poverty and building a greener future, the stories of communities in our countries paint a very different picture. From recent controversial projects to old ones where communities never found justice, the World Bank has a 80-year legacy of harm and impoverishment.
The negative impact of development projects can be long lasting. In 1985, the World Bank funded the Kedung Ombo Dam in Indonesia. Over 27,000 people were forcibly and violently evicted, with the military threatening those trying to resist. Forty years later, the harm inflicted remains unaddressed. Resettled women don’t have close access to water sources, health facilities, and a market. Pregnant women have failed to get checkups, while children have often dropped out of school and are being forced into early marriages. Yet, despite acknowledging the harm it caused, the World Bank keeps replicating old mistakes.
Nachtigal hydropower project. Photo: World Bank Group
In 2022, a community in Cameroon filed a complaint raising serious concerns about the World Bank-funded Nachtigal hydroelectric project, one of the largest dams in Central Africa. Imposed without people’s participation, the project is destroying livelihoods, taking lands, causingdeforestation, and destroying sacred sites. Our Cameroonian sisters are particularly affected: They have lost access to the forests where they used to pick medicinal herbs and other key natural resources. The complaint process has come to an end, but the hopes for justice are extremely limited. The investigations conducted by the bank’s accountability mechanisms are known to be extremely lengthy — and only rarely lead to some remedy.
Civil society has been calling on the World Bank Group to strengthen its safeguards and accountability mechanisms, which are currently falling short of a human rights-based approach. But for every step forward, there has been a step back. Moreover, safeguards have often been used as a pretext to protect the institution from the international human rights legal system and to avoid applying more stringent standards.
Under its new president, Ajay Banga, the World Bank has been undertaking a series of reforms, to become bigger and bolder in its response to climate change. But the bank’s actions appear to indicate more of the same. Beyond the catchy slogans, the World Bank is still replicating a top-down and neocolonial development model that ends up exacerbating the exact problems the bank claims to solve. For example, in Indonesia the World Bank Group — despite its pledges to address climate change — is funding the expansion of the Java 9 and 10 plants, considered the largest and dirtiest coal plants in Southeast Asia.
In its 80 years of existence, it is our view, as shared with other civil society groups, that the World Bank has fueled the spiraling debt crisis, growing inequality, and climate change, with a disproportionate impact on women and children. Some stories — like the scandal of the child sex abuse case in Kenyan schools funded by the World Bank — have hit the headlines. Others, unfortunately, have remained largely unreported.
Indigenous activists in the Salar del Hombre Morto. Credit: Susi Maresca
Last year, the International Finance Corporation — the World Bank’s private arm — approved a $180 million loan to Allkem, for its Sal de Vida lithium mining project in Argentina’s Salar del Hombre Muerto. On paper, this investment falls under the bank’s green portfolio, because lithium is needed for the electric car batteries. In reality, this project has a catastrophic environmental impact, dried up one of the most important rivers in the area,, and violates the rights of the local Indigenous communities.
Before the project was approved, local communities and civil society organizations had sounded the alarm bell. They had prepared briefings on the project’s impacts and engaged with IFC to raise their concerns. But despite being recognized as “beneficiaries,” local communities say they are routinely ignored or silenced. The bank approved the loan without the community’s consent and did not take any action when local activists were threatened and criminalized.
As women defenders and caregivers, for generations we have been protecting our ecosystems sacrificed in the name of development and cared for our communities harmed under the pretext of economic growth. For generations, we have stood in solidarity with our sisters and brothers across the world who have been demanding a different type of development.
The World Bank cannot get it right by putting blinders on the past. The evicted Indonesian communities will not get their flooded land back. The women in Cameroon will not be able to access their precious medicinal herbs, as their forests have been cleared. And the Indigenous people in the Salar del Hombre Muerto lost their meadow near the river Trapiche, which dried up because of the huge volumes of fresh water used to extract lithium. But the World Bank is still on time to withdraw from controversial new projects, to provide remedy to the harmed communities, to speed up the investigation processes, and to seek meaningful consent before building something. Eighty years are enough. If bank President Banga wants the institution to grow bigger, it should learn from the past as it looks forward.
Original Source: Coalition for Human Rights In Development.
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