“Looking at the laws, I prefer to be in Ethiopia, but looking at what pastoralists are doing, looking at what their rights actually are, I prefer to be in Kenya.”
Held in a temporary tented village constructed in the nomadic pastoralist tradition, the legal training aimed to correct this contradiction, informing pastoralists of their rights under Ethiopian constitutional law and brainstorming ideas about how to use these laws to ensure a better life for pastoralists. During the training the Oromia Pastoralist Association, actually a council of elders, discussed with the local government about how to take an active role in official justice proceedings, such as acting as mediators in the on-going land conflict between Kerayu and Afar.
To help the local groups better understand their issues, the Oromia Pastoralist Association requested UN OCHA-PCI to assist them in organising a knowledge-sharing trip for a small group of local Kereyu leaders, together with government officials, to travel to the Orma and Ogiek communities in Kenya to learn how they have dealt with similar issues. This is a follow up trip to a visit by Orma and Ogiek leaders to Kerayu last year. During the last visit the Kerayu found it hard to believe that Orma pastoralists could do so much to solve their own problems; this trip to the Orma land should bring home the reality of their stories.
During the training the Oromia Pastoralists Association also planned to establish structures to increase communication and information-sharing between mobile pastoral communities to keep people informed about different pastoralist initiatives and meetings that community members may want to attend.
