Thousands of Maasai Could be Removed From Their Land Over The Next Five Years

Thousands of Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania have written to the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, pleading for assistance in halting plans to evict them from their ancestral land.The Tanzanian government is threatening to evict more than 150,000 Maasai people because the UN cultural agency Unesco and a safari company want to use the land for conservation and commercial hunting. “We are asking for your help to let our government know that our land is not for sale and that we will continue to resist this longstanding assault on our rights and the ecological integrity of our land. We are therefore calling on your organization to speak out against these abuses and help us prevent the extinction of our people,” read the letter. “You can keep providing funding to those responsible for appropriating our land in the name of profit or you can make it clear to our government that you will not stand by as our right to live peacefully on and conserving our land is denied to make space for elite tourism and ‘trophy’ hunting”.“We have nowhere else to go,” they wrote. “Losing this land will mean the extinction of our community. Over 70% of our homelands have been taken for conservation and investment reasons.” The Maasai say their lives are at stake because eviction will …

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