The Maasai block a highway in protest on August 18, 2024. If designating areas as World Heritage Sites endangers the survival of Indigenous peoples in African countries, UNESCO and IUCN’s outdated, colonial, and top-down approach to conservation must be dismantled immediately, the writer says. – Picture: The Maasai elders / NCA
By Soleil-Chandni Mousseau
In the early morning of August 18, the safari cars that usually creep along the Ngorongoro-Serengeti highway, slowed by their sheer numbers, encountered a different challenge. Thousands of Maasai men and women, draped in red-patterned Shuka cloth and waving grass, a symbol of peace, were blocking the highway.
They were staging a peaceful protest against the Tanzanian government’s latest ruthless attempt to forcibly evict them from their ancestral lands. The police, wary of using violence in front of international tourists as they had in neighbouring Loliondo in 2022, resorted to intimidation tactics instead, blocking vehicles carrying food and water from Karatu to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) to weaken the resolve of the demonstrators.
Losing land and life: a history of displacement in the name of conservation
Since Tanzania’s colonisers established the Serengeti National Park in 1951,d isplacing Indigenous residents to Loliondo and the NCA, the pastoralist Maasai in northern Tanzania have faced relentless struggles against evictions and human rights abuses. For the past four years, their resilience has endured brutal attacks designed to expel them from their ancestral lands, transforming the region into a people-free zone to enhance safari tourism and hunting, as glorified in Western media like Planet Earth.
The atrocities are masked as environmental conservation and protection.
In April 2021, the Tanzanian government announced the Multiple Land Use Management Plan (MLUM), posing a grave threat to the Maasai’s survival in the NCA. This followed the March 2019 joint monitoring mission by the Unesco World Heritage Centre, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), which urged the government to control population growth in the NCA.
The government responded by prioritising tourism revenue, enacting the MLUM and a resettlement plan that expanded the NCA from 8,100km² to 12,083km² and created new restricted areas. In essence, this condemned nearly 80,000 Maasai to lives of destitution or death through forced evictions and the destruction of their livelihoods.
In response to international condemnation, the government falsely claimed that Maasai were volunteering en masse for resettlement at two relocation sites –Msomera village in Handeni district and Kitwai A and B villages in Simanjiro district.
Despite the government’s claims that the Maasai’s relocation is voluntary, they have been forcibly uprooted by a systematic denial of essential social services, including education and healthcare. In May 2024, the government slashed nearly half the budget for Endulen community hospital, the main health-care provider for nearly 100,000 Maasai pastoralists in the NCA.
The grounding of the Flying Medical Service in 2022, after 39 years of critical emergency care, left more than 24,000 children unvaccinated, deprived more than 5,700 pregnant women of necessary medical attention and halted the delivery of life-saving HIV medications. While no official count of fatalities exists, it is undeniable that lives have been lost as a result.
Disfranchisement and punishment: the latest attack
In August, after failing to forcibly remove the Maasai from the NCA, the government struck a severe blow to their political rights. Ngorongoro Division was removed from the voters’ register, disenfranchising tens of thousands of Maasai pastoralists before the upcoming local and general elections in 2025. Those registered to vote saw their polling station moved hundreds of miles away to Msomera village – the site of their forced relocation – effectively stripping even more Maasai villagers of their right to vote.
Adding to this assault on their political rights, Government Notice (GN) 673, issued on August 2, 2024, delisted 11 wards, 25 villages, and 96 sub-villages in Ngorongoro Division, affecting more than 110,000 people, all without obtaining their free, prior and informed consent. The blatant violation of their rights sparked the August 18 protest, where Maasai residents demanded the reversal of GN 673 and the restoration of their electoral rights by the National Electoral Commission.
As images of the Maasai, armed with grass and placards, demanding justice, went viral on August 22, 2024, the Arusha High Court temporarily suspended GN 673, pending further instructions.
However, community lawyers have condemned the ruling as a sham. The court’s decision followed an injunction supposedly filed by Ngorongoro resident Isaya Ole Posi, who denies any involvement. Allegations have surfaced that the government paid the lawyer who filed the injunction against itself, in a calculated move to divert international attention sparked by the protests.
Holding those responsible accountable
While the Tanzanian government must undoubtedly be held accountable for violating the rights of its citizens, we must also scrutinise the role of two other key actors. The first are international conservation bodies like Unesco, IUCN and Icomos, under whose influence the government’s Multiple Land Use Model and resettlement plan were developed.
It took an extensive global campaign to shift their stance. Unesco’s website carries the government’s February 2024 report on the conservation status in the NCA, providing the false narrative that the relocation of communities is voluntary, adheres to international best practices and includes compensation measures. Yet, it also notes concerns from communities, acknowledging the need for a human rights-based approach.
If designating areas like the NCA as World Heritage Sites endangers the survival of Indigenous peoples in African countries, Unesco and IUCN’s outdated, colonial and top-down approach to conservation – while boosting tourism – must be dismantled immediately.
As for the international tourists who continue to flock to Tanzania, lured by the chance to witness the “Big Five” or hunt trophies, the August 18 protests should serve as a wake-up call. The Maasai protesters and their global supporters have made their message clear: This is no longer a scene from “Out of Africa”. If there is no respect for Indigenous lives, then it must be “Tourism out of Tanzania!”.
* Soleil-Chandni Mousseau, a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland, is an intern scholar at the Oakland Institute since 2020.
** This is an edited version of the original article published in Common Dreams