Members of the Torobeek community living along Kenya's Rift Valley region have petitioned the government to recognise them.
The Torobeek claimed they are on the verge of extinction, urging the government to listen to their plea.
The indigenous community which has hundreds of members, majorly lives in the forested parts of Nakuru and Narok counties with some of them spread out across Kiambu, Nyandarua, Migori, Isiolo and Bungoma Counties.
The marginalised community claimed they have been neglected, mistreated and segregated by the previous four governments and now want the Kenya Kwanza regime to come to their rescue.
Their woes stemmed from years of suffering and alienation from historical injustices and denial of their national status as a legitimate Kenyan ethnic group.
They are said to have been evicted them from their land during the colonial era and pushed into the forest and thereafter ignored by the Kenyan government since independence.
Led by the chairperson of the Torobeek Community Association, Paulo Kiprotich Mosbei, the ethnic tribe pleaded with the government to allocate them land for settlement.
"Our people are denied employment opportunities and school-going children are barred from accessing bursaries due to frequent movement owing to displacement and lack of permanent settlement," a member of the Torobeek community, Emily Moso decried.
In 2017, the Kenyan Court affirmed the Ogiek as indigenous people ‘having a particular status and deserving special protection deriving from their vulnerability’.
In a judgment made in Arusha on 23 June 2022, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) reinforced the 2017 ruling that the Ogiek people are indigenous to the Mau Forest and are its ancestral owners, granting them a collective title to be achieved through delimitation, demarcation and registration of their land.
At the Coastal region of Kenya, the Makonde people who descended from an ethnic group from southeast Tanzania and northern Mozambique were granted Identity cards and recognised as the 43rd tribe in Kenya.
Their recognition came after years of being denied access to vital services that other Kenyans enjoyed.
Former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government also recognized members of the country’s Asian community as Kenya’s 44th tribe.
