News

23 February 2011

An update from Serah Munguti, Nature Kenya ...

Court case

The Tana court case came up for hearing on 14th February before Justice Muchelule. However, it was adjourned until 4th April following requests by some of the respondents for more time to file their responses and submissions against the community lawyer's application for conservatory orders.

About 100 people from the Tana Delta travelled overnight to Nairobi to attend the hearing. They were joined by another 50 community members presently residing in Nairobi. Afterwards the community representatives held a demonstration within the Nairobi High Court grounds. High Court Advocate Job Thiga, who is representing the community, addressed them briefly and explained what had happened in court. He also spoke to the media and provided them with copies of the community petition.

At about 10.30 am the 150 community representatives walked to the Vice President's office and presented the issues on Tana to him. He requested a written petition from them and promised to look into the problems further, including bringing them to the attention of the President. The community representatives wrote the petition, signed it and presented it to the Vice President.

The community representatives have vowed to attend the next hearing and follow up with the Vice President and the Prime Minister on the issue.

Nature Kenya’s community awareness campaign

In February Serah Munguti led a team of Nature Kenya staff to generate awareness on the ongoing court case. They aimed to review the recent hearing at Nairobi High Court, ensuring that villagers understood the actions being taken, and to formulate an action plan on community attendance at future court case hearings.

Nature Kenya staff visited around 12 villages as part of the awareness campaign, focusing mainly on those that had not been previously visited.  They explained that the community had filed a case in the High Court, which was being represented by 12 people, including farmers, pastoralists, fishermen and conservation groups.

All the villages visited expressed the desire to attend future court case hearings, especially the upcoming one in April. Although Nature Kenya explained that they do not have much money, community members offered to contribute to the costs of sending one or two people from each village to attend the case. It is expected that at least 50 people will attend the hearing with support from the community. Many community members also requested copies of the petition so that they could better understand the case.

TARDA has already issued verbal eviction notices to two more pastoralist villages (Onkolde and Galili). However, for villages like Salama Location, which rely on arable farming, TARDA has adopted a different strategy. By farming the surrounding land, it is restricting the community members’ access to their subsistence farmland and forcing them to leave their villages.

On Friday 19th the Prime Minister Raila Odinga was in Garsen. Some community members organized themselves and demonstrated before the PM against the grabbing of their land. They also gave him a memorandum on the issues affecting them, explaining that losing the wetland would expose them more to the effects of drought. The PM promised to look into the issue but in his speech steered clear of mentioning development projects in the Tana Delta.