Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/tanzania-government-accused-serengeti-sale-maasai-lands
Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/tanzania-government-accused-serengeti-sale-maasai-lands
anzania has been accused of reneging on its promise to 40,000 Masai pastoralists by going ahead with plans to evict them and turn their ancestral land into a reserve for the royal family of Dubai to hunt big game.
Activists celebrated last year when the government said it had backed down over a proposed 1,500 sq km “wildlife corridor” bordering the Serengeti national park that would serve a commercial hunting and safari company based in the United Arab Emirates.
Now the deal appears to be back on and the Masai have been ordered to quit their traditional lands by the end of the year. Masai representatives will meet the prime minister, Mizengo Pinda, in Dodoma on Tuesday to express their anger. They insist the sale of the land would rob them of their heritage and directly or indirectly affect the livelihoods of 80,000 people. The area is crucial for grazing livestock on which the nomadic Masai depend.
Tanzania evicting 40,000 people from homeland to make room for Dubai royal family
▻http://www.salon.com/2014/11/17/tanzania_will_sell_masai_homeland_to_dubai_royal_family
40,000 Masai people will be evicted from their homeland in Tanzania, because the Dubai royal family has bought it with the intention of using it as a reserve to hunt big game. Last year, the Tanzanian government had resisted the purchase, proposing instead a “wildlife corridor” dedicated to hunting near the Serengeti national park. However, the deal will still reportedly go through, and the Masai will have to leave by the end of the year.
Avant tout, faire taire le roquet…
Iran and US close in on historic nuclear deal at Vienna talks
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/iran-us-historic-nuclear-deal-vienna?CMP=twt_gu
There are also differences among the six-nation group involved in the negotiations with Iran. France has consistently been more opposed to nuclear concessions than the other five (the US, UK, Germany, Russia and China).
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, flew to Paris on 4 November for talks with Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, seeking assurances that he would not make a public intervention in the last few days of negotiations. In the closing stages of talks over the 2013 interim deal, Fabius warned against western concessions, saying Paris would not play along with a “fool’s game”.
Accounts vary as to whether Kerry was able to secure a guarantee from Fabius not to break ranks in the eleventh hour of talks.
“For Fabius, the ties with the Gulf Arabs – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – are much more important economically, and for French jobs in the next few years, than Iran,” said a French source familiar with the discussions. The Sunni monarchies in the Gulf are as opposed as Israel to western endorsement of an Iranian nuclear programme on any scale.