Survival International press release Tanzania: Maasai protest UNESCO's complicity in their eviction for “conservation”
April 21, 2026
© MISAEight UN experts say “conservation efforts must not come at the expense of human rights”
Hundreds of Maasai people have protested in one of Tanzania’s most important tourism destinations over their eviction in the name of conservation.
The protests on World Heritage Day aim to highlight UNESCO’s complicity in the Tanzanian government’s long-standing persecution of Maasai people who have lived in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – for generations.
The Maasai are being driven from their ancestral lands in the name of nature conservation. The Tanzanian authorities have carried out arbitrary arrests, beaten and tortured residents, and suspended health services to force families out. Two commissions set up by the Tanzanian president have just given the green light for the evictions to continue and expand – and cited Ngorongoro’s UNESCO status to justify them.
Just before the protests, eight UN experts issued a public statement calling on the authorities to release the commissions’ findings. They also said: “In 1951, the Maasai were assured that they could continue residing in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in exchange for relinquishing lands to establish the Serengeti National Park. These historical commitments to Indigenous Peoples must be honoured and their human rights fully respected.”
The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance said in a statement: “The World Heritage Status is being used against us, without us. We are not considered as legitimate and primary rights-holders of Ngorongoro. Ngorongoro, to them, belongs to tourists, conservationists, and the world.
“We call on #UNESCO, #IUCN and the World Heritage Committee… to clearly and publicly state that Indigenous Peoples’ rights must be upheld, to insist that the various Indigenous communities of Ngorongoro are the legitimate custodians and rights‑holders of this land, and to demand that the so-called voluntary relocation programme be terminated.”
Survival International’s Director Caroline Pearce said today: “UNESCO is the hidden partner in the Tanzanian government’s illegal evictions of Ngorongoro’s Indigenous people from their own ancestral territory. For decades, the World Heritage Committee has framed the Maasai as a threat to the environment, saying that they are too numerous, and that their cattle are overgrazing, providing a veneer of legitimacy for these evictions. Even now, it continues to describe this program of violent dispossession as “voluntary” relocation.
“With the UN’s own experts now condemning the evictions, how much longer will UNESCO back them?”
