Kenya: William Sipai’s Fight for Maasai Land Rights in Kedong On 14 September 2025, government surveyors escorted by a police battalion arrived in Kedong to install boundary markers on land claimed by the Maasai. Community members moved quickly..
Tag: LDSF
Stewards turned into encroachers. LDSF protecting Indigenous communities criminalized for defending land, forests, and collective survival
Stewards turned into encroachers. LDSF protecting Indigenous communities criminalized for defending land, forests, and collective survival “Custodians were turned into trespassers.” For the Ogiek Indigenous Peoples in Kenya, the phrase reflects a painful reality. After winning a..
The ongoing displacement of the Marihangin community and their fight for land recognition in the Philippines
For the Marihangin Indigenous community in the Philippines, legal protection of their territory was meant to safeguard them against dispossession. In practice, the more than two-decade wait for recognition of their ancestral lands has coincided with escalating corporate..
Paraguay: Ayoreo punished for defending their forests amid climate crisis
In the northern Paraguayan Chaco, three Ayoreo leaders are facing criminal charges after being accused by the National Emergency Secretariat (SEN) in the context of the unjust and insufficient state response to a drought and forest fires that..
Je’eruriwa People: the struggle for full recognition and the right to land despite forced displacement in Colombia
In May 2025, the Colombian Constitutional Court issued a landmark ruling recognizing the Je’eruriwa People as a subject of collective reparation and ordering their immediate inclusion in the Unified Registry of Victims, after more than 70 years of..
They won in court, but are still being evicted: the Ogiek struggle for justice in Kenya
For generations, the Ogiek Indigenous Peoples have lived in Kenya’s Mau Forest Complex and in parts of Mount Elgon and the surrounding highlands, sustaining themselves through hunting, gathering, and beekeeping, and governing their territories through customary systems rooted..
Silencing Voices: The Case of 11 Indigenous Rights and Forest Peoples’ Defenders Charged in Thailand
Photo credit: Network of Indigenous Peoples in Thailand (NIPT). Indigenous people and forest-dwelling communities gathered in front of Chiang Mai Provincial Hall to demand amendments to forestry laws that affect forest-dwelling communities. Deputy Prime Minister Prasert Chantawongthong met..
Defending Life in Nahuatzen, Mexico: The cost of autonomy and freedom in the face of organized crime
José Antonio Arreola remembers the early morning when he had to leave his home, his wife, and his young children, with only a fellow activist by his side for support. Threats from organized crime forced him to flee..
Oil Extraction in Turkana: Community Rights, Broken Promises, and the Fight for Justice
In 2012, the discovery of oil in the Lokichar oil basin of Turkana County, northwestern Kenya, was heralded as a milestone for national development. Tullow Oil Company, granted extraction rights under a Compulsory Land Acquisition process led by..
Fred Kariankei and the fight against conservation elite in Kenya
Fred Simiren Kariankei, an Indigenous Maasai community land rights defender from southern Kenya, never imagined that defending his people’s land would land him in prison. But in 2021, when he exposed what he believed was systematic betrayal by..
