By Betty Luke
The Northern Rangelands Trust has initiated an online question and answer session for responding to several allegations including land grabbing and fanning violence by arming communities against each other.
The NGO has severally found itself on the receiving end over claims of dispossessing pastoralists of their land for wildlife conservancy use without involving all community stakeholders.
While the organisation maintains that the land continues to be possessed by the community which directly benefits from conservation activities, residents claim that the local communities are excluded in decision making process.
In May 2019, Isiolo residents petitioned the County Assembly to ban NRT from undertaking conservation activities in the county citing illegal land deals with defunct county council and extrajudicial killings.
NRT has also been accused of having interest in minerals in the region, allegations that it has denied.
“We have initiated a set of True and False question and answer posters to help everyone understand and differentiate between allegations and truth about NRT,” the organisation shared.
The organisation said it had for a long time been receiving allegations especially on land grabbing and therefore need to “set the record straight”.
On land grabbing claims, NRT said it does not control or manage community land but was a preserve of the 43 conservancies it manages across Northern and Coastal Kenya.
The 43 community conservancies occupy 42, 000 square kilometres of land.
Every community is free to join and leave at wish and membership to NRT is voluntarily decided by the respective communities, NRT shared.
“The land belongs to resident communities from respective conservancies who voluntarily becomes members of NRT,” it added.
On fanning violence, NRT said it was only working with 870 rangers from all the conservancies to supplement national government’s peace building efforts.
NRT has directly employed 1360 people with 69, 400 having benefited from its current 135 conservancy funded development projects in the last six years.
It has brought on board 80 women and youth peace ambassadors and established seven (7) rapid response teams.
