Victor Muruga (r) and his three-year-old brother Ian Kimani (l) prepare lunch from their camp at 
Mumoi farm. Peter Kahare / IPS[Desdemona’s been following this story since the beginning: Mau forest evictees. It’s a true climate refugee tragedy and emblematic of the kinds of terrible decisions nations will be forced to make as large swaths of the planet become uninhabitable.] By Peter Kahare
24 January 2012

RIFT VALLEY, Kenya (IPS) – Six-year-old Victor Muruga points to a hole in the bush that he calls his “bedroom”. “I sleep there, under that tree and my mother sleeps under that blanket,” says Muruga. Muruga is in a jovial mood as he prepares lunch for the family. The bubbly boy, his three-year old brother Ian Kimani and their mother had to initially spend five days in the bush after being transported here to Mumoi farm, enduring the scathing sun and biting cold as they waited for the government and Kenya Red Cross Society to provide them with tents. Muruga’s family are among the 4,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) affected by Kenya’s 2007/2008 post-election violence who live here on Mumoi farm in Subukia Township, 200 kilometres north west of Nairobi. Four years after the violence, they are yet to be allocated their one-hectare piece of land that the government promised all IDPs. […] In the country’s 2011/2012 budget allocation, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta set aside 60 million dollars for resettling IDPs. However, the process of resettlement has been characterised by corruption, tribalism and hostility to the IDPs. Early last year, the government launched an investigation into a missing two million dollars that had been set aside for the resettlement IDPs, which had allegedly been misappropriated by officials in various ministries and even representatives of IDPs. The 2007/2008 post-election violence displaced over 660,000 people, over half of whom were displaced in the Rift Valley Province. While more than 300,000 families have returned to their farms, and their ethnic homelands in Central, Nyanza and Western Provinces, some have sold the homes they were forced to flee from and bought land elsewhere. There remain over 15,000 families displaced by the post-election violence awaiting their land settlements in Rift Valley Province, the largest province in Kenya. Each family has an average of five children. “These are the people we recognise, plus the 5,710 families evacuated from the Mau Forest in 2009 who are camping in three major camps along the forest boundary,” Mondo says. […] Another politician, Luka Kiagen, a Member of Parliament for Rongai Constituency, in the Rift Valley Province, has been leading a section of elders to complain over the settlement of IDPs in Rongai. He claims that 10,000 people from the Kikuyu community had settled in Rongai at the expense of the largely Kalenjin community who had been evicted from the Mau Forest. “People displaced from Mau Forest who are residing along the border have been forgotten in the resettlement programme,” Kigen told IPS. The government maintains that there was no discrimination in the resettlement exercise. “Such allegations are unfounded. It is not by choice that members of the Kikuyu community are the largest number of IDPs,” Mondo told IPS. Non-governmental organisations and civil societies have blamed the government for the continued delay in resettling IDPs. “The IDPs issue has exposed the intolerance and divisions among communities. The government has not been willing to clear this blot on the face of Kenya. It has failed in upholding the constitution that guarantees security and accommodation for all Kenyans by false promises for four years. “The government claims that there is no land for relocation. But look at the thousands of acres owned by politicians and lying idle in the country. Can’t they be bought by the government at least to settle the IDPs?” Ndung’u Wainaina, director of the International Center for Policy and Conflict, told IPS. […]

Four Years On, IDPs Remain in Camps

By Kiplang’at Kirui
27 January 2012 The Mau Forest Interim Co-ordinating Secretariat requires Sh3 billion to resettle 7,000 families in Maasai Mau block of Mau Forest Complex. Secretariat chairman Noor Hassan Noor said they have made formal request to the treasury for the funds before eviction exercise begins. Noor made the remarks yesterday during the Joint Enforcement Team workshop in Narok town. He said that they launched a 100-day rapid response initiative in efforts to secure the forests still inhabited by settlers. “We have made requests to treasury for the funds and I have no doubt at all that the government will meet our proposal,” said Noor. Noor said the secretariat uses Sh5 million every month to foot the bills of the joint enforcement team which guards the forest. The team comprises officials from the regular and Administration Police, the Kenya Forest Service, the General Service Unit and the Narok County Council. Noor said the profiling and survey in the Maasai Mau forest, which is a trust land of Narok County Council, ended two years ago with some 15,000 people settled on the 46,278 hectare forest. He said that they have reduced destruction of the forest by 80 per cent from the time the conservation of the biggest water towers in the country started. He refuted previous claims that the government has shelved the eviction of settlers in the forest saying the secretariat is using all scientific methods to restore the ecosystem without affecting the lives of the settlers. “We are using all methods to conserve the forest, but evicting the settlers is inevitable,” said Noor. He warned government officers who collude with illegal loggers to destroy forests that stern action will be taken against them. Noor also appealed to Kenyans to stop lighting fires in areas where there are forests. “I urge them to stop playing with fire in forest areas out of ignorance and neglect as the country is experiencing dry seasons,” he said About 15,000 settlers are settled on the 146,800 hectare-Maasai Mau. They encroached it through the extension and sub-division of group ranches which began in 1998. The Mau issue has put the Prime Minister Raila Odinga at loggerheads with a section of Rift Valley MPs led by Eldoret North MP William Ruto. The Rift MPs want all the Mau Settlers must be fully compensated or given alternative settlement before the evictions are effected.

MAU Secretariat Needs Three Billion Shilling to Resettle Families