Douglas McK. Brown Lecture 2023-24: Legal Protection of Africa’s Hunter-Gatherers’ Collective Land Rights: A Study of the Akie Community of Kiteto District, Northern Tanzania

Event Description

Africa is home to the remaining ‘hunter-gatherers’ - meaning traditional communities that make a living predominantly through collecting wild fruits and hunting wild animals. Notable examples include the Hadza of Tanzania and the Batwa of Burundi. These communities totally depend on land and natural resources for their physical and cultural survival as distinct groups. Other common features are communal stewardship over land and a deeply felt spiritual and emotional nexus with the earth and its fruits. However, they lack robust legal protection of their ancestral lands, partly because most African governments regard hunting and gathering to be at variance with the dominant development paradigms. The indigenous peoples’ platforms frequently resorted to by these communities, face stiff resistance among policy makers and conflicting views from scholars. The remaining body of human rights law is largely modelled along protection of individual rights. Yet economic viability, culture, religion, and wholistic development of these communities depend on securing their communally owned land and natural resources. Focusing on the Akiye community of Kiteto District, Northern Tanzania, this lecture unveils impacts of legal gaps, and proposes appropriate solutions.

*This event qualifies for 1 hour of CPD credit.

Speaker

Dr. Elifuraha Laltaika is a Senior Law Lecturer at Tumaini University Makumira, Tanzania, and a former Harvard Law School Visiting Scholar. A Fulbright alumnus, he holds a Doctorate from the University of Arizona, USA. Between 2017 and 2019, he served as an expert member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. He has guest-lectured in several Universities in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Elifuraha is the 2022 recipient of the Svitlana Kravchenko Environmental Rights Award (Oregon, USA) recognizing his “impact in the law while working to support local communities.” Recently, the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights acknowledged Dr. Laltaika’s expert contribution in the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights V. Republic of Kenya reparation case. He is an Iso Lomso (Khosa for ‘eye of tomorrow’) Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study in South Africa.