Extractive industries and pastoralists’ rights in Kenya & Uganda

A report of the African Commission’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities Extractive industries, land rights and indigenous populations’/communities’ rights: East, Central and Southern Africa (140pp) was published in 2017 by the CELEP partner IWGIA (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs) and was adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights at its 58^th Ordinary Session. In this report, indigenous populations/communities are regarded as a distinct group of people whose culture and way of life are intimately tied to their lands and who suffer from marginalisation and discrimination from their neighbours and dominant society. The report argues that pastoralism, like hunting and gathering, is not valued by most African governments and that pastoralists continue to be marginalised. The dominant policy in African states is to see land titled under individual tenure, discriminating against communal land management.

The report looks into various mechanisms that have been tried to better regulate extractive industries’ and governments’ engagements with indigenous populations/communities in order to avoid violation of human and peoples’ rights. It analyses the human-rights framework of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and discusses some of the more practical considerations to be made when applying FPIC in an extractive-industry setting.

Two of the four country profiles are in Eastern Africa: i) in the Karamoja region of Uganda, where the government does not recognise the Karamajong’s rights to land; and ii) in the Turkana area of northern Kenya, where the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia, the wind farm south of Lake Turkana and the LAPSSET (Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor) infrastructure project are affecting many communities of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers.

The report concludes with a list of recommendations.

Posted on 16 December 2018 in Pastoralism & Extractives, Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Policy & Power