February 9, 2010 COHRE today welcomed the recent landmark decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which ruled that the Kenyan government violated the land rights of the country’s indigenous Endorois community.

The ruling recognises, for the first time in Africa, indigenous peoples' rights to ancestral land.

The decision was adopted by the African Commission in May 2009 and approved by the African Union at its recent Summit meeting in Addis Ababa.

“This is an historic ruling,” said Bret Thiele, COHRE's Senior Expert on Litigation, who helped file an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the case. “It shows that a government cannot simply evict people from their ancestral land to make way for new developments.”

The Kenyan government had evicted the indigenous Endorois people from their lands to make way for a wildlife reserve.

The London-based Minority Rights Group and the Kenyan NGO Centre for Minority Rights Development (CEMIRIDE), lodged a complaint with the African Commission in 2003, saying that the Kenyan government had violated the African Charter on Human and People's rights by failing to recognise and protect the Endorois’ ancestral land rights and refusing to compensate the community adequately or grant restitution of their land.

COHRE's intervention argued that the displacement of the Endorois community amounted to a forced eviction in violation of the international human right to adequate housing.

For further information, please see the Minority Rights Group press release.  Continued…