For centuries, Maasai peoples living in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) have always moved freely over vast savanna rangelands in search of water and available grassland, without any restrictions. But in 1979, when UNESCO came into the picture, a lot of things changed. This included new land use regulations that had “consequent effects on seasonal grazing patterns” and “dismantled” their ways of life, said Andrew Simon Msami, programs director for the Tanzanian human rights organization PINGO’s Forum. He told Mongabay that Maasai peoples were not included in governance and development decisions that affected their rights and, since then, several attempts have been made to evict them, despite “stern resistance” from the communities. According to a report by Indigenous rights organization Survival International, UNESCO has supported the illegal eviction and abuse of Indigenous peoples in many World Heritage Sites, including the NCA and Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo. They and other human rights organizations say the U.N. agency has awarded new parks the venerated World Heritage status despite knowledge of repeated cases of torture, rape and murder by rangers. They say the reasons for this range from UNESCO’s lack of mechanisms to enforce human rights obligations to its requests for countries to control population growth in heritage sites and the agency’s internal politics. “UNESCO is not taking out a stick and beating and evicting Indigenous peoples itself,” Fiore Longo, a senior research and advocacy officer at Survival International, told Mongabay. “However, our report shows that UNESCO encourages authorities…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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