We, the undersigned
, are a group of civil society organizations working in Tanzania and in the Greater Serengeti Region in particular. We mainly work in the areas of human rights and good governance.We take note of the Serengeti highway stamped misnamed debate following the Tanzanian Government announcement that it has plans to build a highway through Serengeti National Park.
The Tanzanian Government plans to build a highway through Serengeti National Park is allegedly meant to connect Arusha and Musoma towns and nearly ten districts along the corridor. We support the Government for coming out with such a legitimate plan to build a highway for the communities. This is because the road will bring benefit not only to the people of Loliondo but the entire groups.
When the British colonial Government in Tanganyika created Serengeti National Park communities were evicted and forced East while others still were resettled in the Western side of the park. These communities have never been compensated and worse and worse still they remain in abject poverty.
A Kenyan animals’ welfare organization namely ANAW filed a suit at the EACJ praying the court to permanently prevent the Tanzanian Government from ever constructing the highway and thus permanently denying communities in East and West Serengeti a highway. Some of these organizations are consideringimmediately joining the defendant as an interested party in this legal battle.
That Kenya has its hidden agendas because literarily Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya which is also migration route is littered with hotels and roads. In fact there are many transport infrastructures in the wildlife preservation enclaves in the region. There are, for example, tarmac roads in the environs of Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The Nairobi-Mombasa (road and railway) divides Tsavo into two; Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks. Above all the Morogoro-Iringa highway passes through Mikumi National Park in Tanzania.
We further take note that communities living in Arusha, Arumeru, Monduli, Longido, Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Tarime, Bunda and Musoma Districts in East and West Serengeti, where the proposed road passes, have a right to infrastructure enjoyed by the supposedly “civilized” societies from around the world. That East and West Serengeti peoples should not be denied a highway under any pretext; the Serengeti ungulate migration included.NGONNET