Human Rights Award of the City of Weimar

Joseph Moses Oleshangay, Maasai advocate and winner of the Weimar Human Rights Award, will be visiting Germany in the period from December 8 to 16, 2023. The aim of his visit is to draw attention to the state-organized displacement of the indigenous Maasai community in his home country, Tanzania, in the name of nature conservation. He will be available for interviews during his stay. 

The following stops are planned for his visit to Germany: December 8: Berlin; December 9 to 12: Weimar; December 12 to 14: Berlin; December 15: Frankfurt; December 15/16: Karlsruhe. The award ceremony will take place on December 10, from 5 pm to 7 pm, at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. Joseph Oleshangay will also hold public speeches on the topic of human rights violations against the Maasai – on December 13 at the Haus der EKD in Berlin (starting at 7 pm) and on December 15 at the Internationales Begegnungszentrum in Karlsruhe (also starting at 7 pm). 

The Tanzanian government is planning to forcibly evict the Maasai from two nature reserves in the Serengeti ecosystem – claiming that the Maasai are a threat to the environment, which is scientifically untenable. Also, the evictions violate legally binding judgments of Tanzanian courts. As a member of the “Legal and Human Rights Centre”, Joseph Oleshangay has been advocating for the rights of the Maasai for years.

The Federal Republic of Germany is actively involved in development cooperations and in funding conservation projects for the Serengeti ecosystem through the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) – with 80 million Euros in the year 2022 alone. Several project partners of the German Federal Government are indirectly involved in the displacements, so that Germany is to be seen as partly responsible.

We would like to invite you to take part in the events and to discuss the pressing human rights situation in Tanzania. If you have any questions or need information on the itinerary, please contact Christoph Hahn, expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, at the Society for Threatened Peoples: c.hahn@gfbv.de or +49 551 49906-27.