Conflict Resolution Team

The Northern Rangelands Trust has a Conflict Resolution Team appointed by the Executive Director and sanctioned by the Council of Elders. The team is led by a retired Senior Chief and nine veteran elders well known for their traditional skills in conflict resolution. The team periodically undergoes formal training in conflict mediation skills in order to address the wide diversity of issues that it has to reconcile.

Conflict arises over employment, leadership, resource use and other issues which can seriously threaten the success of a Community Conservancy. The team is therefore responsible for maintaining peace through mediation, dialogue and advice. Members are respected individuals who are tribally neutral.
Since the Trust started, the Conflict Resolution Team has been deployed on several occasions with extremely successful results including:

• Inter-tribal mediation between the Samburu and Rendille tribes over grazing areas. The outcome was consensus and the joint development of grazing by-laws between the two parties;
• Arbitration between the community and a Conservancy Board Chairman suspected of misappropriation of funds;
• Resolution of the long-standing conflict between the Samburu and Lekurruki communities  on grazing. The team was able to meet separately with each group and then facilitate the election of a cross-border grazing committee made up of the two opposing parties. This resulted in the development of a grazing Memorandum of Understanding and finally led to the peaceful departure of the Samburu from Lekurruki grazing lands;
• Settling of the dispute between a Community Conservancy and its Traditional Community Structure where failure of the latter to register new community members of the Group Ranch led to individuals threatening the Conservancy’s activities;
• Arbitration between the community and a tourism investor that did not honour the agreed payment owed to the community from business generated within the Community Conservancy;
• Arbitration over poor governance after a Group Ranch committee ignored some members of the Group Ranch who were offering benefits only to a section of its members. The  ensuing livestock encroachment into the conservation area was resolved with the intervention of the Conflict Resolution Team;
• Inter-tribal intervention between the Pokot and Samburu tribes over the newly established Ltungai Conservancy where the Conflict Resolution Team provided an entry point to help the Pokot create their own Conservancy.