Country: Tanzania

Group: Maasai

Date Finalized: 10/17/2023

Team: Esha Kubavat (lead), Gordon Kok, Emily Allan, Esha Kubavat, Hannah Lux, Kelly Hashiro

Content Warning: Forced Away, sexual assault

Approximate Time Period: 1980-present

The Maasai are an ethnic minority group in Tanzania. Their population numbers are about 430,000. They culturally exist as pastoralists in the northern region of Tanzania. The Maasai comprise 14 different tribal groups (Minority Rights Group, 2023). In the 1980s, the Tanzanian government sold 10,000 acres of Maasai land to Tanzania Breweries Limited. Since 2006, the Maasai have not had access to the land. The government continues to sell their land and violently force them out of their homes. In 2009, after the selling of land to the UAE for hunting, the government burned down the Maasai homes and brutalized the residents. The attackers raped one woman and forced multiple women into miscarriages. In 2015 this continued with the government burning down 114 homes and continuing to reduce their land size (Minority Rights Group, 2023). In June 2022, the Tanzanian authorities forcibly evicted the Maasai community from Loliondo (Amnesty International, 2023). Security forcibly removed the Maasai community from their ancestral lands, where 70,000 people no longer had access to the grazing lands their livelihood depended on. Tanzanian security forces used brutal force to evict the Maasai from 1,500 sq km of their ancestral lands. The forced eviction has caused the displacement of thousands of Maasai. The Maasai community in Tanzania has resisted government pressure to leave their ancestral lands (Minority Rights Group, 2023). The East African Court of Justice postponed its decision on this issue (Council on Foreign Relations, n.d. ). Maasai leaders have continued to advocate for the recognition of Indigenous land and territorial rights (Kabukuru, W., 2022).

The data quality is rated a 3/3 for the use of academically peer-reviewed sources.

Sources

  1. Minority Rights Group. (2023). Maasai. Minority Rights Group. Retrieved on October 11, 2023 from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/maasai/
  2. Council on Foreign Relations. (n.d.). Maasai evictions highlight conflict between “preservation” and Citizenship. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/blog/maasai-evictions-highlight-conflict-between-preservation-and-citizenship
  3. Amnesty International. (2023, June 6). Authorities brutally violated Maasai amid forced evictions. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/tanzanian-authorities-brutally-violated-maasai-amid-forced-evictions/
  4. Kabukuru, W. (2022, June 23). Tanzania’s Masaai Demand Indigenous rights in UN Framework. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/climate-politics-science-united-nations-africa-9f7aa351806e0a97e802a5338f65e27a