Salini Engineering reported to OECD over Ethiopia/Kenya dam disaster

Salini Engineering reported to OECD over Ethiopia/Kenya dam disaster

By Survival International

Survival International has reported Italian engineering giant Salini to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) over its construction of a controversial dam which is set to destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in Ethiopia and Kenya.

The dam has cut off the Omo river’s regular flooding, which 100,000 people rely on to water their crops and livestock and a further 100,000 depend on indirectly. According to experts, this could also spell the end for Lake Turkana – the world’s largest desert lake – and disaster for the 300,000 tribespeople living along its shores.

Salini did not seek the consent of local people before building the dam, but claimed that an “artificial flood release” would compensate them for their losses. However, this promised flood never came and thousands of people now face starvation.

Up to half a million people face starvation as a result of the dam Salini has constructed on the Omo river. © Magda Rakita/Survival International

Up to half a million people face starvation as a result of the dam Salini has constructed on the Omo river.
© Magda Rakita/Survival International

The region is one of the most important sites in early human evolution, and an area of exceptional biodiversity, with two World Heritage Sites and five national parks. The head of Kenya’s conservation agency said last week that the dam is unleashing “one of the worst environmental disasters you can imagine.”

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Salini has ignored crucial evidence, made false promises and ridden roughshod over the rights of hundreds of thousands of people. Thousands are now facing starvation because Italy’s largest contractor, and one of its best known companies, didn’t think human rights were worth its time. The real consequences of the Ethiopian government’s devastating policies for its country’s development, which are shamefully supported by western aid agencies like the UK’s DFID and USAID, are plain for all to see. Stealing people’s land and causing massive environmental destruction is not progress, it is a death sentence for tribal peoples.”

Our Roots, Our Responsibility

Our Roots, Our Responsibility

INDIGENOUS CUSTODIANS CALL FOR RECOGNITION AND PROTECTION OF SACRED NATURAL SITES

Indigenous custodians from Benin, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia have released a powerful new statement outlining the importance of sacred natural sites and governance systems.

Emerging out of a biocultural diversity revival movement that’s starting to build serious momentum across continental Africa, the statement forms the heart of a new report that builds the case for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to do its part.

The new report, authored by The Gaia Foundation, African Biodiversity Network and human rights lawyer Roger Chennels, draws attention to the way that sacred natural sites and their community custodians have been systematically undermined and violated since the colonial era. Despite the official decolonization of Africa, this persecution continues today, say the authors, who have extensively documented the renewed scramble for Africa’s land, mineral, metal and fossil fuel wealth and its impact on Indigenous territories.

Sabella Kaguna, a sacred site custodian from Tharaka, Kenya, with a map of her ancestral territory and indigenous seeds (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Sabella Kaguna, a sacred site custodian from Tharaka, Kenya, with a map of her ancestral territory and indigenous seeds (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Both the custodians and the report’s authors are now urging the African Commission to invoke the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (African Charter). and protect sacred sites, governance systems and custodians in a ‘decisive policy and legislative response’ to these threats.

SACRED NATURAL SITES

SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE AND LAW

According to the new report, sacred sites are “Places of ecological, cultural and spiritual importance, embedded in ancestral lands”. They also play an important role in community conflict resolution practices and other traditions central to the cultural life of Indigenous Peoples.In their statement custodians describe the centrality of sacred sites to their existence, writing that “Sacred natural sites are where we come from, the heart of life. They are our roots and our inspiration. We cannot live without our sacred natural sites, and we are responsible for protecting them.”

Sacred site custodians from Bale Ethiopia. (Photo :Tamara Korur)

Sacred site custodians from Bale Ethiopia. (Photo :Tamara Korur)

The custodians go on to outline in detail how sacred natural sites are the primary source of their laws and customary governance systems. Drawing together a list of common customary laws, the custodians demonstrate how these governance systems enable Indigenous Peoples to both protect their territories and maintain their ways of life and identities.

Quoting Beninese custodian Ousso Lio Appolinaire on the relationship between nature and culture, the report’s authors emphasize that a priori laws based upon and derived from the laws of the Earth underpin the great diversity of laws and customs practiced by Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

“In the beginning there was Nature; culture and indigenous knowledge come from Nature. Nature cannot be protected in a sustainable way without the culture of that place. The erosion of culture leads to the destruction of Nature. It is critical to conserve the culture and knowledge of our ancestors for good ecological governance in service of Nature”, says Appolinaire.

The custodians’ are calling for the African Commission to recognize and protect sacred natural sites on the basis that they are the foundations of the governance systems, cultures and values celebrated and enshrined in the African Charter.

The report discusses at length the commitment the African Charter makes to recognizing Africa’s legal plurality, including Indigenous People’s customary governance systems. Laying out a broad vision for an Africa free of colonialism, Articles 17, 18 and 61 of the Charter promote plurality and the traditional cultural values that, for custodian communities, are intimately tied to the existence and health of sacred natural sites.

In order to safeguard these rights, sacred natural sites must be protected, and the customary governance systems connected to them honored, argues the report.

LOSING LAND AND MEMORY

SACRED SITES UNDER THREAT

The custodian’s statement intimates a critical need to protect sacred natural sites in accordance with the African Charter due to the interconnected crises of disappearing knowledge and increasingly devastated ecosystems.

VhaVenda community members and their ecological calendar in Venda Limpopo. (Photo: Will Baxter)

VhaVenda community members and their ecological calendar in Venda Limpopo. (Photo: Will Baxter)

“We are deeply concerned about our Earth because she is suffering from increasing destruction despite all the discussions, international meetings, facts and figures and warning signs from Earth… the future of our children and the children of all the species of Earth are threatened. When this last generation of elders dies, we will lose the memory of how to live respectfully on the planet, if we do not learn from them now,” say the custodians.

As remedy, the custodians describe a litany of destructive and disrespectful practices that sacred natural sites ought to be legally protected from. These include unwanted tourism, research and documentation, the use of non-indigenous seeds, land grabbing and financial speculation.

Special attention is given to the problem of extractivism, with custodians declaring sacred natural sites to be ‘No Go Areas’ for mining and other forms of destructive ‘development’. They write that “Sacred natural sites are not for making money. Our children need a healthy planet with clean air, water and food from healthy soils. They cannot eat money as food or breathe money or drink money. If there is no water, there is no life.”

“In my country sacred sites are holy places, they are not a place for infrastructural development. Those sites are kept by the community”, says Sabella Kaguna, a custodian from Tharaka in Kenya and one of the statement’s authors.

In order to ensure custodian communities are empowered to protect sacred sites on their own terms, the custodians are seeking legal parity. They write that they have observed how the dominant legal system in their home nations is operationalized to legitimize the destruction of sacred natural sites in contravention of their own laws and customs.

This trend has been recognized by the African Commission’s own Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations. In a 2010 report the group described how “Indigenous communities in Kenya, like most others in Africa, often rely on their African customary law. However, Kenya’s legal framework subjugates African customary law to written laws. […] African customary law is placed at the bottom of the applicable laws”.

The report draws attention to examples of ‘multi-juridicial’ legal systems from around the world as examples of how indigenous legal traditions can be given greater parity. Describing the African Charter as ‘replete’ with references with legal pluralism and the need to respect ancestral legal systems, it makes the case for more wide-ranging and robust protection of these systems in African nations under the Charter.

A REVIVAL GATHERS PACE

Though the custodians’ statement calls for new actions from the African Commission and member states, at the grassroots level Indigenous custodian communities have been taking active steps to protect sacred natural sites for a number of years.

The report shares a number of case studies that showcase the success Indigenous communities have had in protecting sacred sites so far.

Meeting of sacred site custodians at Lake Langano, Ethiopia 2015 (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Meeting of sacred site custodians at Lake Langano, Ethiopia 2015 (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Benin is home to a network of sacred natural sites, known as Vodun zun, including over 2,940 sacred forests. In 2012, due in large part to the work of Indigenous-led organization GRABE-Benin, Benin set a new precedent by creating a ‘sacred forest law’ (Interministerial Order No.0121). The law formally protects sacred forests, recognizing their importance for biodiversity and ethno-cultural traditions.

Since that time GRABE-Benin has accompanied communities to apply for registration and legal recognition of their sacred forests as protected areas, as well as recognition of the communities’ rights to govern and protect them. By the end of 2013, a total of nine sacred forests had been formally protected.

Sheka Forest (Photo: Will Baxter)

Sheka Forest (Photo: Will Baxter)

In the Sheka region of Southern Ethiopia, a region famous for rare afromontane forests, Shekacho communities have made great strides to protect the area’s 200+ sacred natural sites from threats such as deforestation.

With assistance from MELCA-Ethiopia, a local NGO, the communities have begun to revitalize their traditional culture, and clans have united to seek protection for sacred sites. As a result of these efforts, Sheka Forest was recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2012. Since then, the regional government has issued a regulation for the protection of the Sheka forest Biosphere Reserve.

These successes are part of a wider process of Indigenous cultural revival under way across Africa. The report describes how communities such as those in Sheka and Benin are coming together to rebuild their cultural identities and customary governance systems. In doing so, they are challenging dominant legal systems that continue in the colonial vein of legitimizing eco-cultural destruction, rather than preventing it.

A new film from the report’s authors provides greater insight into this ongoing revival. In the film, Method Gundidza of the Mupo Foundation (South Africa) describes the critical importance of customary governance at a time of multiple eco-social crises:

“We are saying that law should derive from nature. And if law should derive from nature, customary governance systems are the law. This is where it (law) should come from. These are the (Indigenous) people whose day-to-day lives reflect how to live with nature and how to care for nature.”

The custodians and their supporters now hope their statement will impress this key insight upon the African Commission and inspire them to action. In the meantime, they will continue with their quiet revolution.

In name of “conservation”, Kenyan forces torch homes of indigenous Sengwer people

In name of “conservation”, Kenyan forces torch homes of indigenous Sengwer people

By New Internationalist

Kenyan security forces have been burning hundreds of homes – belonging to some of the country’s oldest hunter-gatherers – in the last fortnight, in the name of ‘conserving forest biodiversity’ and safeguarding the area’s water catchment area for urban access.

The Kenya Forest Service Guard, along with riot troops armed with AK-47 machine guns, began razing the thatched homes of the Sengwer community, estimated at 15,000, after a government deadline for eviction of the Embobut Forest community expired two weeks ago.

The Sengwer people, also known as the Cherangany people, are being forcefully evicted as ‘squatters’ by the government.

‘The Sengwer people, who have cared for the region for centuries, have been labelled squatters, and the Kenyan government seems willing to breach the country’s own constitution and court rulings. It pledged not to use force, but now it seems that as many 1,000 homes have been torched, together with blankets, cooking utensils and schoolbooks. For how much longer will old-fashioned ideas of “conservation” be used to justify the violation of tribal peoples’ rights?’ says Freddie Weyman, Africa campaigner at Survival International.

Hundreds of Sengwer families have fled into high-altitude montane forest after having their homes and possessions destroyed.

‘I was in the house with my four children. All their uniforms, our cooking pans, water containers, cups were burnt. There was no consultation. The children are very upset because we have lost everything. The children and elderly people will end up getting pneumonia because we don’t have anything to cover ourselves at night,’ said one 25-year-old Sengwer widow.

Brazen defiance

The World Bank is currently being investigated by its own inspection panel after the Sengwer community complained last year that a World Bank-funded project, the Natural Resource Management Project (NRMP), was responsible for redrawing the boundaries of the Cherangany forest reserves, thus displacing and marginalizing hundreds of members of the forest community. The project currently stands accused of legitimizing and funding the Kenyan government’s illegal evictions of the Sengwer people without consultation, consent or compensation, through arson and intimidation in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013.

The Kenyan Constitution of 2010 decrees that the government must protect and preserve the practices of those indigenous communities that have sustained their ancestral forest habitat for centuries. However, the Kenyan government is acting in brazen defiance of its own constitution by forcefully relocating indigenous communities without their free, prior and informed consent. Article 63 (d) of the Kenyan Constitution recognizes the rights of communities, such as the Sengwer, to own ancestral lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherers.

No consultation was undertaken and no consent was given by the forest community for their homes to be burnt or for their ancestral land to be captured by the state. As well as undermining the Sengwers’ constitutional rights, the government is also rejecting international agreements such as international human rights laws and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, to which Kenya is a party.

Burning Sengwer homes is a perversion of the country’s constitutional commitment to ‘respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use’ of biodiversity, as stipulated under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Forced removal of the Sengwer group is also in contempt of an injunction secured at the High Court in Eldoret forbidding any such evictions until the matter of community rights to their land is resolved.

‘Crucially, the constitution also states that ancestral land and the land occupied by traditionally hunter-gatherer groups such as the Sengwer is “community land”, owned by that community. None of these legal provisions is being respected by the government of Kenya in the recent evictions of the Sengwer from Embobut Forest,’ says Tom Lomax, legal expert at the Forest People’s Programme.

A misinformation campaign has been launched by the government. In order to justify its human rights violations against the Sengwer people and its broken international agreements, it has labelled the indigenous group ‘squatters’, despite the forest community having lived for hundreds of years in the Embobut Forest in Western Kenya, where they practise traditional modes of sustainable living.

Where else is home?

By conflating a large population of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), including landslide victims and victims of electoral violence who have settled in the Embobut Forest area, with the Sengwer community, the government is conveniently able to refer to all forest inhabitants as ‘squatters’ or ‘evictees’.

By doing so, the government is highlighting its own wilful refusal to recognize the rights of Kenya’s indigenous communities, or their conservation of ancestral land and resources. The Kenyan government has also insisted that the Embobut Forest inhabitants were ‘voluntarily evicted’ and that they have been adequately compensated for loss of livelihood and habitat.

In November 2013, the government indeed promised 400,000 Kenyan shillings ($4,600) per evicted family, enough to buy an acre of land or four cows. On 12 December, the local government announced that ‘the evictees were given the cash and have no reason to continue staying in the forest’ and that ‘by 3 January 2014, we expect all squatters out of that forest’.

However, the only people who had signed up for compensation were the IDPs, not the 15,000 Sengwer community members who claim the Embobut Forest as their ancestral territory.

‘Those who did not sign were Sengwer, who hold the forest as the last vestige of their greater territories, and also can’t for the life of themselves think where they would move to. Where else is home?’ says Liz Alden Wily, research fellow at the Rights and Resources Institute.

Wily says it is spurious for the government to declare ‘conservation’ as a reason for the Sengwer people to be evicted when they have protected and preserved the forest biodiversity of their ancestral habitat for hundreds of years.

‘The government is being congratulated on being hard line on the necessity to keep forests free of people, given their essential water-tower role. But this is not necessarily the way to protect forests, when you have to [evict] a committed indigenous forest dweller population which depends upon the trees remaining and who, given the chance, would protect these with their life,’ says Wily.

Livelihood desolation and eviction has loomed heavy over the Sengwer community since they were first dispossessed of land by the British colonial administration in the early 20th century. During the post-colonial administration in 1964, their remaining ancestral territory was gazetted and designated as a protected area, making their traditional hunter- gatherer lifestyle untenable. Since the 1980s, the Sengwer community have faced 20 evictions. This month’s eviction has been the most violent and systematic.

However, international rights organizations remain incredulous about the Kenyan government’s declarations that these evictions are in the pure interests of ‘conservation’.

‘Forests are profoundly fertile areas, and perfect for intensive tea cultivation and other commercial agricultural use. We need to look ahead, to keep an eye as to who in fact ends up using these areas. We have seen this repeatedly ever since the administration of President Moi [1978-2002]; a flurry of evictions, followed not by lasting conservation measures but by piecemeal excisions, turning these public properties into private enterprise areas,’ says Wily.

From New Internationalist: http://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2014/01/23/sengwer-forest-evictions/

How an indigenous activist has fought to shut down funding for an 800 foot dam in Ethiopia

By Rachel Nuwer / The New York Times

At a casual glance, Lake Turkana in northern Kenya may not seem a fount of milk and honey. The temperature around the lake hovers around 100 degrees, and tourists are warned not to approach the water because of the crocodiles and vipers lurking among the volcanic rocks.

Yet Lake Turkana, the world’s largest permanent desert lake, is regarded by many anthropologists as the cradle of humankind. Today it serves a vital purpose for local indigenous communities that depend on its waters for fish and other resources; in 1997, citing its rich biodiversity, Unesco listed it as a World Heritage site.

Ikal Angelei, 31, one of the six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, grew up playing on Lake Turkana’s dusty shores, chatting with old fishermen who sold their daily catch to her family and others. When she graduated from high school, she moved to the capital to study at the University of Nairobi, traveling later to the United States to earn a master’s degree in public policy and political science at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Then she returned home and began working on community outreach for a group called the Turkana Basin Institute.

That’s when she learned about a proposed dam.

The chairman of the institute, Richard Leakey, approached her with a document outlining the plan for the dam, on the Omo River in Ethiopia — one of Lake Turkana’s lifelines. “He said to me, this is your people, your lake, your problem,” Ms. Angelei said in an interview. His words stirred her, she said, and she began researching the dam project in her spare time.

If completed, the Gibe 3 Dam() would be the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa and provide increased electrical power to Kenya and Ethiopia. But in a region more desperate for food than electricity, the dam would take a significant toll on water levels and thus on fisheries, potentially worsening relations between disparate communities that are already enmeshed in resource-based conflicts.

“At first, I thought, it can’t be real,” Ms. Angelei said. “I couldn’t imagine the area without the lake.” Reflecting on her father’s own anti-dam activism in the late 1980s, she began making phone calls, sending e-mails, and broadcasting appeals from a local radio station.

Day by day, her campaign gained resonance as more and more people from divided and marginalized local communities shared their stories with her. In 2009 she founded a grass-roots organization, Friends of Lake Turkana, to provide a unified voice for the peoples of the lake.

Together they demanded that the Kenyan government and investors in the dam halt the $60 billion project. To Ms. Angelei’s surprise, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank all withdrew their financing. Last year the Kenyan Parliament mandated that the government commission an independent environment assessment from Ethiopia.

“The feeling that the actual construction had lost its funding was amazing — it gives me hope that we can go on,” Ms. Angelei said.

The struggle is not quite over. China, the last big investor, is still pushing for construction. Ms. Angelei believes that ultimately governments will have to step up to put the Gibe 3 Dam to rest. “China may have green policies they’re trying to implement, but as long as there’s not a format for holding Chinese companies and banks accountable, then the policies do not work,” she said.

Taxpayers in Western countries could help by holding their governments responsible for backing flawed development projects, she added.

Although she has frequently been discouraged, Ms. Angelei said, witnessing the struggles of local families and women helped her keep her goal in sight. Often she was approached by strangers who could offer her little more than blessings and encouragement, she said: “It was seeing the look in people’s eyes that kept me going.”

For her efforts to protect her community, Ms. Angelei was awarded the Goldman Prize in the African regional category; each year, the prize is also awarded to a recipient in Asia, Europe, an island nation, North America and South or Central America. Each honoree receives an award of $150,000. (The program was initiated in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, civic leaders and philanthropists in San Francisco.)

“These are people who normally go unrecognized but do so much of the work,” said Lorrae Rominger, the deputy director of the prize program. “Hopefully, when they go back to their country, people will look, listen, stop and want to know more about what they’re doing,” she said of the recipients.

As a young woman living in an an area where violence is out of check, Ms. Angelei stood out for “taking this risk upon herself and making such a big difference,” Ms. Rominger said.

Ms. Angelei said that struggling to make a difference is not easy but that not trying means becoming part of the problem. Her father often cited the adage that “it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees,” she said. “Even if you don’t win, at least you’re opening the platform for others after you.”

From The New York Times: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/to-fight-a-dam-rather-than-live-on-your-knees/

Survivors of misogynist violence have established a refuge in Kenyan village

By Hannah Rubenstein / Inter Press Service

No man, except for those raised here as children, lives in Umoja village in Kenya; one has not for two decades. It is a village only of and for women, women who have been abused, raped, and forced from their homes.

In the culture of northern Kenya’s Samburu district there is a saying: “Men are the head of a body, and women are the neck.” The neck may support the head, but the head is always dominant, towering above.

But in this remote village, located in the grasslands of Samburu district, this mantra does not ring true. In Umoja, as one female resident says, “We are our own heads.”

Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, holds a unique status in the country: it is a village populated solely by women. For more than two decades, no men have been permitted to reside here.

The rule is one of the requirements of a community that has fought against overwhelming odds to become a place of refuge for women. It is a sanctuary where men – who have been the cause of so many problems for these women – are simply not welcome.

In the 22 years since its founding, the village has had a significant impact not only on the women who choose to call Umoja home but within the communities that surround it. The example that Umoja has set, coupled with the outreach efforts of its residents, has touched the lives of women in the region.

Celena Green, who is the Africa programme director for an organisation called Vital Voices that works with the women of Umoja, told IPS: “The existence of Umoja has allowed women’s groups in other surrounding villages to learn from the empowerment and pride of the Umoja women.”

Women from nearby communities attend workshops in the village that are aimed at educating women and girls about human rights, gender equity, and violence prevention. When the women return home, Green explained, “they begin to change the culture, demanding a safe, violence free community where women and girls are valued and protected.”

“Ideally, no woman or girl should ever have to flee her home to come to Umoja in the first place,” she added. “But ultimately, the aim of Umoja is to provide an emergency safe haven for those women who are in distress, and more importantly to contribute toward building communities where everyone is valued and can succeed.”

Umoja’s history began in 1990, when a collective of 15 Samburu women, who called themselves the Umoja Uaso Women’s Group, began selling beadwork and other goods to raise money for themselves and their families. As the group began to grow financially lucrative, they found themselves facing increasing harassment by men in their communities who felt that economic growth was not appropriate for the women, who traditionally play a subordinate role.

In response, the women, led by matriarch Rebecca Lolosoli, decided to break away and begin their own village, in order to ensure security and cooperation for themselves out of the reach of those who sought to undermine them.

Today, Umoja is home to 48 women who have come from all over the country. Their stories vary – some were young girls fleeing forced marriages to old men, others were raped or sexually abused, and several were widows who were shunned by their communities. Moreover, several women residing in the village are Turkana, taking refuge from the tribal violence currently raging in the central region of Isiolo.

The villagers, who rely on the sale of beadwork and profits from a nearby campsite and cultural center, pool their funds as a collective to support themselves. In addition to providing food and basic necessities for village residents, profits are used to cover medical fees and the operation of a school that serves both the village’s children and its adult women who wish to learn basic skills and literacy.

Nagusi Lolemu, an older woman with delicate hands and a melodious voice, is one of the village’s original founders. Sitting in the shade, her nimble fingers string red beads deftly in one fluid, unthinking movement, as she speaks rapidly in Samburu.

Lolemu’s story echoes a recurring theme in the village: she was widowed after years of marriage and subsequently rejected by the community she called home. “There were too many single women,” she explained to IPS through a translator. Single women, who are not permitted to hold property in Samburu culture, and generally are not educated, are viewed as a financial drain on the community. When her husband passed away, she was no longer welcome in her home.

Nagusi, who has been living in Umoja for 22 years, has two grown children. She does not question her decision to leave her home for Umoja.

“My children are educated, working, and giving back to the family and the community,” she told IPS. “In a regular village, this could not happen.”

In her village – like any other traditional community – there is little opportunity for women’s education and the consequential financial benefits it brings, she explained. Her daughter would have grown up as she did, illiterate and dependent on men for all her basic needs.

“Here,” Lolemu said, matter-of-factly, “everyone is equal.”

Green echoes this statement, explaining to IPS: “In a traditional village, women may not have had the opportunity to exercise leadership, to be in control of their wealth or resources, and they would more likely experience domestic violence, female genital cutting, child marriage and other traditional practices that discriminate against and physically harm women and children.”

In addition to barring men from residing in the village, the women of Umoja live by a set of self- imposed rules, which, as Lolemu explained, are based on ensuring equality and mutual respect within the village.

Residents are required to wear the traditional clothes and intricate beadwork jewelry of their people at all times, in order to preserve and promote their cultural heritage. The practice of female genital mutilation is not permitted. And the only males allowed to sleep in the village are those who have been raised there as children.

Read more from Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107309