NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Eleven environmental organisations from across the world have called on the Finnish government to suspend a €9.5 million fund to the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) because of escalating human rights abuses of the country’s indigenous Sengwer people.
In a joint letter addressed to the President of the Republic Mr. Sauli Niinistö, with copy to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister of Foreign Trade and Development, the organisations, most of them international NGOs noted that KFS bases its approach to forest conservation on evicting forest communities from their ancestral lands. “These are the very communities who have the knowledge and commitment to protect their forests,” reads part of the letter.
The letter was handed to the Finnish government on 24th January 2016 - the day the Sengwer community members of Embobut Forest gathered for the funeral of Robert Kirotich, a 41-year-old man who was allegedly shot dead by a KFS solder on 16th January while out herding cattle on the Sengwer’s ancestral land.
So far, the European Union has already suspended the funding of a €31 million project to the Kenyan government and KFS in response to such killings. A delegation from the EU is planning to conduct a site visit, with Amnesty International and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).
The Finnish Government has been the main supporter of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) over many years, and the organisations feel that it too shares significant responsibility for funding what they refer to as human rights abuses.
In a statement, Justin Kenrick, a senior policy advisor at Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) pointed out that the Finnish government has been a major funder of KFS over many years, and that it needs to learn from KFS's history of illegally logging the forests they are supposed to protect.
“Conservation science is clear that securing the collective land rights of such indigenous forest communities, communities who have cared for their lands for centuries, is the surest way of securing such forests and the flow of water from them to Kenya,” said Kenrick.
“The Finnish government should (instead) support forest indigenous communities to secure their constitutionally recognised land rights, rather than fund KFS which violently evicts them," he added.
On January 22, the Eldoret High Court in Kenya issued a court order stopping the police from evicting members of the Sengwer community from the Embobut Forest. However, according to the environment conservation organisations, a community member Mr Yator Kiptum had reported of continued evictions with KFS guards allegedly burning down more Sengwer homes in Kapkok glade, Embobut forest.
Another Sengwer community member Milka Chepkorir Kuto told delegates at the Investing in Human Rights Defenders event in Brussels that human rights abuses have been ongoing for decades, though it was now intensifying.
She said: “Today Kirotich, one of my own community members, is being buried. He leaves behind a family that looked up to him. He was killed by KFS in Embobut forest during their violent forceful evictions. KFS officers are committing massive human rights violations. Any funding and any organisation or person willing to fund KFS is funding violations directly or indirectly.”
The eleven environmental organisations petitioning the Finish government include the FPP, the IP Hub Africa, EU based FERN, the BIC, the ICCA Consortium, Both ENDS, Natural Justice, iied, Life Mosaic, Maan Ystavat, and Rainforest Foundation UK.
