WISP-IUCN

Pastoralist Organization for Resource Rights

Summary
Samburu Case Study
Kenya

Background
The situation of Samburu pastoraslists in Northern Kenya represents a challenging yet inspiriting case study.
Not only are Samburu women and men faced with multiple issues pertaining to land rights, insensitive
conservation policies, conflicts with wildlife, conflicts with neighbouring pastoralists groups, encroaching
agriculture, mining and resource exploitation, but also gender issues that bring up highly contested social,
cultural and economic issues. For example, many Samburu women are subject to practices such as forced
marriages, FGM, domestic violence and exclusion from decision making processes and institutions.

In terms of land issues, most land in the region is Trust Land - a land tenure system where land is managed
on behalf of people and is vested under local governing authorities. Each person owns land, but
communally, and in theory, no one can be dispossessed of land. Use rights on trust land are adjudicated by
county councils through the enactment of bi-laws. In reality, there is little legislation or mechanisms of
recourse and people are dispossessed of their lands. One of the major concerns faced by pastoralists is that
the various county councils, to whom the land is entrusted for the people, are being used by elite people and
powerful outside interests to grab land and create biased policies in their own interests.

Process of Organization of Pastoralists & Success Stories

Despite these many challenges, Samburu pastoralists have mobilized in many creative ways to take things
into their own hands, and to engage in legal mechanisms, advocacy processes, and changes in cultural
practices that not only reinforce women’s rights, but also reinforce customary institutions. The following
three case studies in Samburu region are success stories that highlight people’s agency and advocacy:
 The creation Waso Trustland Project demonstrates the way pastoralists are pro-actively engaging in
legal processes to defend their rights to land by creating an NGO that actively engages in legal and
policy processes and land cases on behalf of pastoralist communities. It is one of the only NGOs
run by pastoralists in the region that advocates exclusively on land rights and legal processes;
 Samburu pastoralists have also begun to re-instate customary institutions such as a council of elders
in order to defend their rights to land. By reinforcing and reinvigorating such institutions, they are
able to channel all decisions made in regards to land through a rigourous and customary decision-
making process that reviews all local land claims, proposed changes to land and conflicts;
 The Umoja Women’s Village is perhaps the only village of its kind in Kenya. Declaring itself “a
violence-against-women free zone”, it provides a safe haven for women escaping practices such as
forced marriages, FGM and domestic violence. It was created by a group of Samburu women who
lobbied their local district council for land, where they have not only created a “women’s village”,
but also created a cultural village, as well as a camp for lodging tourists, a cultural museum for the
preservation of Samburu culture and artefacts, a pre-school, and kiosk for selling Samburu
handicrafts. It is a self-sustaining village whereby all revenue generated in the village is re-
distributed to women and new projects. The village allows women to own property, including
livestock – a situation that challenges patriarchal customary norms everywhere else in the Samburu
region that only allows men to own property.
This case study demonstrates the innovative and locally appropriate ways that pastoralists are advocating
and defending their rights to resources and their fundamental human rights. Many lessons have been learned
in their struggles for defending their rights and these can be shared with other pastoralists groups globally.

There are two important aspects here:

The land rights issue, in particular also the self organisation in the NGO, that helps in defending the rights.
Examples would be interesting. How did they prove their rights, how did they overcome the corrupt
mechanisms? What role does the council of elders play exactly in the defense of the land rights?
The other important aspect is the gender case. This initiative is very impressing!
How are the initiatives of the women judged in the communities? By the women living with their men? By
the men themselves? Does the women’s initiative change something in the traditions in general? Is there not
a danger of heightened opposition, conservative reaction? How do the traditional leader react to the
initiative?