The Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai is walking a tightrope on evictions of poor squatters from Kenya’s few remaining forests. Over 50,000 have recently been forced out of the woods, often with little explanation and guns at their backs.
Maathai, who won the peace prize for protecting Kenya’s forests from the plundering cronies of then-President Moi, now serves as deputy minister of environment in the very government doing the evicting. Read here where she supports the necessity of the expulsions to save what little remains of Kenya’s forests, while condemning the way it is being done.
Grist coverage of her winning the Nobel Peace Prize is here.
