F.a: Promoting biocultural rights of the indigenous and hunter-gatherer Aweer community in Boni, Lamu County

General

The project supports the Aweer indigenous people of Lamu County to defend their biocultural rights. The Aweer are nomadic hunter-gatherers living in scattered communities. Their entire cultural existence is increasingly threatened by external threats to their own habitats. The project strengthens their understanding and skills related to their rights and defending them with the tools offered to them by national legislation and international human rights treaties. The project has the following elements: - Trainings related to legislative empowerment - related to land, resources and a clean and safe environment. The Aweer are empowered to face possible illegal displacements and attempts to exploit their territories and traditional knowledge. - Promoting of local and national development plans, which take into account and recognize the culture, identity and traditional rights of the Aweer and other indigenous and local communities. - The process of drafting Aweer biocultural community protocols will be started. Biocultural community protocols highlight the values, customs and needs of communities on the one hand and the rights and obligations of communities on the other. The protocol describes the traditional ways of life of the communities, information about the resources available to the communities and the use of biodiversity. It can be used to highlight the rights and obligations of communities in terms of the management, protection and sustainable use of their territories. - De-gazettement of the Aweer community?s ancestral lands, presently the Boni-Lungi reserve, and its legal recognition as Indigenous Peoples and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs) through a formal and secure land tenure system. The scope of the project includes approx. 20,100 representatives of the Aweer community in the Boni Lungi and Panda Nguo areas of Lamu County. A baseline report on the state of biocultural rights and other environmental justice dynamics of the Sanye community of Lamu county, will also be one output of the project. Indirect beneficiaries are aother indigenous communities of Lamu (such as Bajuni, Swahili, Orma. Experiences among communities in a similar position elsewhere in Kenya (e.g. Ogieks and Sengwers) are shared through the Community Land Action Now (CLAN!) network. The project is implemented by Natural Justice (https://naturaljustice.org/).