Finals week. Procrastination. Immense amounts of facebook use. I am a huge supporter of facebook eventually (eventually being the key word) leading to my inspiration for that final paper. Well, luckily as I hit that 1 AM mark the night before my final blogging paper is due (Sorry Dr. Collins), I found an article on my British friend's facebook titled:
"Kenya's Samburu people 'violently evicted' after US charities buy land"
This instantly struck a chord. Whilst in Kenya, I took a brilliant class with Abdelwahab Sinnary called 'Biodiversity and Conservation in East Africa.' This headline instantly brought me back to his classroom. We often discussed the ideology of international organizations' (especially American) work in Africa. One of the main ideas I learned in the class was that East African land, habitats and animals are anything but wild. But you would never know it with the historical media and images portrayed all over America. For example, take Disney's "African Cats" that was just released this year. This clip describes African wildlife and how anything can happen on African animal adventures.
Although African Cats (which by the way, these cats only reside in East and South Africa) discusses wildlife within the Maasai Mara National Park. 
The movie used ticket sales to boost charity funds with the slogan 'See African Cats, Save the Savanna.' They donate money from the movie to the African Wildlife Fund. They were able to save 50,000 acres of land in Kenya. But who's land?
One of the major realizations I had in Sinnary's class in Kenya is that although American conservation organizations have done a lot to educate people on wildlife, they do not often take into account that animals are no more important than people. People and animals coexisted at some point in Africa and now all land for many wild animals, especially the Big Five, are enclosed in the various conservation areas like national parks, reserves, and sanctuaries. These areas are great because poaching is controlled by the Kenyan Wildlife Service, tourists can safely tour the area, people can worry less about their crops and homes being attacked by animals, and research can be done in this enclosed space.
The organization under watch in this piece is the African Wildlife Fund, an international organization that started in 1961. I have been an avid supporter of the organization since I was a kid considering I bought into the African Acre system with my mom. She has had a love for East African wildlife since the movie 'Born Free' was released. When I saw the article from The Guardian about the Samburu people being forcefully evicted by US charities, I became sick to my stomach.
The article discusses African Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy's forceful eviction of the pastoralists off of the former president's Moi's land to create a new National Park. 
The police harrassed approximately 2,000 Samburu people to leave the land for the park. The question of land ownership is a major one in Kenya, especially to pastoralist groups who raise livestock on the land and are often nomadic. Although this land is seen as private to the businessman or the international actor, the land to the indigenous people is their survival and unit to their communities and livestock. This community lives outside of the Samburu National Reserve thus according to the law is safe. Yet as international organizations work further to protect more and more acres of land, indigenous displacement often occurs. I am obviously not arguing that displacing people is not inevitable. In the Amboseli National Park, the Maasai were displaced from thousands of acres of land for Mt. Kilimanjaro and the wildlife. This truly needed to occur to bring in tourism, employment, protection from poaching etc. Yet I think that the international actors forget that wildlife and the people have coexisted together in East Africa for thousands of years. Shouldn't the community and the Kenyan Wildlife Service decide what the land will be used for?
Although I do not think this was the intention of the African Wildlife Fund and Nature Conservancy. When they both were quoted they stated:
John Butler, director of marketing for the AWF, said: "The African Wildlife Foundation does not condone violence. AWF has a longstanding history of working closely with local communities to ensure that conservation solutions benefit both people and wildlife. Unfortunately, we cannot comment at length on this issue due to a pending court case in Kenya."
Blythe Thomas, a spokeswoman for the Nature Conservancy, said: "The conflict over natural resources across Africa is a serious issue. Everywhere we work in Africa, we're working with local communities to address natural resource issues. We're closely monitoring this situation; unfortunately we can't comment at length due to a pending court case in Kenya."
But the question is why were the police unlawfully killing people (2 people thus far have been shot and one was eaten by a lion), raping women, burning manyattas (traditional homesteads), burning their supplies, and stealing livestock?
One of the main issues I have found structurally with NGOs, small and large, are the decision-making among local and global actors. I think the way this eviction is taking place truly reflects the governance of the organizations themselves. All of the major people working in AWF are American. Not a single African listed. If these people were mandated to evict to protect the land, why were the police burning the land? Also, when light came to this prolonged violence in these communities, the organization gave the 17,100 acres of land as a "gift" to the Kenyan Wildlife Service to deal with. The entire project has now gone to court considering the indigenous violations, violence and destruction to the land. Evictions and conservation projects have halted while the case goes to court.
Honestly, NGOs saving grace in this matter would be to go to the indigenous people for guidance. Even the World Bank says so.
Its analysis shows how deforestation plummets to its lowest levels when indigenous peoples continue living in protected areas, and are not forced out.
I guess the only people to really finish this frustrating yet necessary post are the Samburu.