Source: European Parliament
Question for written answer E-001333/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Carola Rackete (The Left), Lynn Boylan (The Left), Anja Hazekamp (The Left), Sebastian Everding (The Left), Emma Fourreau (The Left), Cristina Guarda (Verts/ALE), Catarina Martins (The Left), Ignazio Roberto Marino (Verts/ALE), Andreas Schieder (S&D), Damien Carême (The Left), Mimmo Lucano (The Left), Rima Hassan (The Left), Jussi Saramo (The Left), Hanna Gedin (The Left), Jonas Sjöstedt (The Left), Matjaž Nemec (S&D), Nikos Papandreou (S&D), Erik Marquardt (Verts/ALE), Krzysztof Śmiszek (S&D)
The Tanzanian Government has been evicting Maasai peoples from their ancestral lands in Loliondo since 2022 and is currently taking action to evict 150 000 Maasai from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Loliondo.
The UN criticised the Tanzanian Government plans in a report[1], identifying trophy hunting as having severe adverse effects on Maasai peoples.
In a 2024 report,[2] Amnesty International detailed how Otterlo Business Corporation, a trophy hunting company linked to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the UAE and a member of the ruling royal family, has participated in forcibly evicting Maasai communities.
In October 2022, Parliament adopted a resolution urging a ban on the ‘import of hunting trophies derived from the CITES-listed species’[3]. Yet, during its debate with the ENVI Committee on 1 March 2023, the Commission asserted that trophy hunting was sustainable and, when ‘well-regulated’, could sustain local, indigenous populations.
- 1.Will the Commission reconsider its existing position, as set out in its reply to Written Question E-001394/2023[4], in relation to a general ban on the import of hunting trophies derived from CITES-listed species?
- 2.Will the Commission consider a ban on, or at least the suspension of, the import of hunting trophies specifically from Tanzania, given the clear and extremely significant adverse human rights effects of such imports on the Maasai indigenous peoples?
Submitted: 1.4.2025
- [1] Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), ‘Tanzania: UN experts warn of escalating violence amidst plans to forcibly evict Maasai from ancestral lands’, 15 June 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/tanzania-un-experts-warn-escalating-violence-amidst-plans-forcibly-evict.
- [2] Amnesty International, ‘Tanzania: Business as usual in bloodied land? Role of businesses in forced evictions in Loliondo, Tanzania’, 7 August 2024, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr56/8320/2024/en/.
- [3] European Parliament resolution of 5 October 2022 on the EU strategic objectives for the 19th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to be held in Panama from 14 to 25 November 2022 (OJ C 132, 14.4.2023, p. 41, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022IP0344).
- [4] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-001394-ASW_EN.html.