" World Bank accused of supporting evictions, rights abuses at Tanzanian park" 6 October 2023

Farmers and herders in southern Tanzania say rangers at Ruaha National Park have committed extrajudicial killings and livestock theft in a bid to drive them off their land to make way for tourists.

The allegations form the basis of a complaint submitted to the Inspection Panel of the World Bank, which is providing financial support to Ruaha and its Tanzanian National Parks Authority (TANAPA) rangers through a $150 million grant. Last week, the U.S.-based advocacy group The Oakland Institute released a report accusing the bank of violating its internal safeguards by turning a blind eye to human rights abuses it said TANAPA has committed.

According to the report, TANAPA rangers are responsible for a number of deaths in and around Ruaha in recent years, including during a single day in April 2021 when they killed a fisherman and two herders, one of whom was just 14 years old.

“TANAPA have been doing so many massacres and brutalizing villagers, capturing their cattle and killing them,” one community leader who requested anonymity told Mongabay in a phone interview.

The report said that in 2008, tens of thousands of Maasai, Datoga and Sangu residents of Mbari district, where Ruaha is located, suddenly found themselves living inside the park’s boundaries when its size was doubled by an edict from the Tanzanian government. Late last year, officials announced plans to resettle more than 20,000 of them from five villages in the park without their consultation.

The eviction notice is currently being challenged in court in a case that was brought by 852 community plaintiffs.