East African Assemblies

Over 14 million people in Africa have been evicted from their ancestral lands in the name of colonial conservation, leaving communities destitute and landless.

Nevertheless ancestral communities deeply care for their lands.

This June, ten indigenous peoples’ communities from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania came together for the ‘East Africa Assembly on Land, Justice and Indigenous Peoples’ Co-operation’,

The first round of a series of women-led community-to-community assemblies to explore how to overcome this legacy of colonial conservation in Africa and put an end to indigenous land appropriation.

At the end of the assemblies the people drafted the People-to-People Declaration at Laboot, and are seeking to put it into practice.

“East Africa’s women-led assembly creates space for women to be able to express themselves freely without fear from social and cultural beliefs or any intimidation in the journey of securing their land tenure rights. In the assembly together as one, we will empower ourselves, we will fight for community-led conservation, we will promote our cultures. The cultures that hold indigenous knowledge on how best we have been taking good care for our environment. Knowledge that cannot be learnt elsewhere rather than inheriting and passing it on to other generations. Together as assembly we are determined to win the fight against colonial ways of conservation because these promote interests of the few and destroy the only sustainable way of taking good care for our environment.” - Teresa Chemosopt

Join us on October 1 for more

From 11.30-1.30 UTC we’ll be hearing from people from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Theresa Fend