The Ogiek

In News

• The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, an international court established by members of the African Union, ordered the Kenyan government to pay $1.3 million to the indigenous Ogiek people as reparations for historical injustices and discriminations.
  • The government has also been ordered to recognise the Ogiek as an indigenous people of Kenya.

Who are the Ogiek?

• The Ogiek are hunter-gatherers – some in the deep forest live purely by hunting and gathering, while the majority grow vegetables and keep livestock also.
  • They have traditionally hunted such animals as antelope and wild pigs, which is now generally illegal.
• Since time immemorial, they have lived in the Mau Forest in Kenya’s Rift Valley and in the forested areas around Mt Elgon, relying on these territories for food, shelter, identity and therefore their very survival.
• The group has been “routinely subjected to arbitrary forced evictions from their ancestral land by the Kenyan government, without consultation or compensation (since Kenyan independence in 1963).”
• They are among some of the most marginalised of all indigenous peoples and minorities in Kenya. 

Source:DTE