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Kenya

Centre for Minority Rights Development (Kenya) and Minority Rights Group International on behalf of Endorois Welfare Council v Kenya

Attachments

SUMMARY OF ALLEGED FACTS

1. The complaint is filed by the Centre for Minority Rights Development (CEMIRIDE) and Minority Rights Group International (MRG), on behalf of the Endorois Community. The complaint was further supported by an amicus curiae brief submitted by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). The Complainants allege violations resulting from the displacement of the Endorois community, an indigenous community, from their ancestral lands, the failure to adequately compensate them for the loss of their property, the disruption of the community's pastoral enterprise and violations of the right to practise their religion and culture, as well as the overall process of development of the Endorois people.

2. The Complainants allege that the Government of Kenya in violation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples? Rights (hereinafter the African Charter), the Constitution of Kenya and international law, forcibly removed the Endorois from their ancestral lands around the Lake Bogoria area of the Baringo and Koibatek Administrative Districts, as well as in the Nakuru and Laikipia Administrative Districts within the Rift Valley Province in Kenya, without proper prior consultations, adequate and effective compensation.

3. The Complainants state that the Endorois are a community of approximately 60,000 people who, for centuries, have lived in the Lake Bogoria area. They claim that prior to the dispossession of Endorois land through the creation of the Lake Hannington Game Reserve in 1973, and a subsequent re-gazetting of the Lake Bogoria Game Reserve in 1978 by the Government of Kenya, the Endorois had established, and, for centuries, practised a sustainable way of life which was inextricably linked to their ancestral land. The Complainants allege that since 1978 the Endorois have been denied access to their land.