The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance (MISA), a platform that defends the rights of the Maasai in Tanzania and internationally, has issued a forceful rejection of the two presidential commission reports presented to President Samia Suluhu Hassan on March 12, 2026, at the Chamwino State House in Dodoma.
In a statement dated March 18, 2026, MISA said it “categorically rejects the recommendations of these commissions” and urged the government not to implement them.
The two commissions — one assessing land use conflicts in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) and surrounding areas, the other reviewing the government’s so-called voluntary relocation exercise — were established in December 2024 and formally launched in February 2025 following large protests by Maasai communities in August 2024.
Flawed process
MISA argued that the commissions were conceived not to resolve the community’s grievances, but to validate decisions the government had already taken.
The group said the Terms of Reference (ToR) for both commissions were “designed to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been made,” with both bodies focused on how relocation could be carried out successfully rather than on whether it should happen at all.
READ MORE: Ngorongoro’s Mixed Land Use Model ‘No Longer Sustainable,’ Presidential Commission Finds
“Our people came out in large numbers to testify, hoping that the process would help resolve existing land-use disputes,” MISA said. “From the outset, however, the Terms of Reference were designed to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been made.”
MISA also challenged the credibility of the reports themselves, saying they relied heavily on previously contested policy documents — including the 2019 Multiple Land Use Model (MLUM) Report — and reproduced narratives long used to justify the displacement of Maasai pastoralists.
The group accused the commissions of using “inflated population projections, selective and incorrect use of human, wildlife and livestock data, and serious institutional conflicts of interest,” while ignoring scientific evidence that contradicts the state’s position.
False narratives
MISA pushed back sharply against the commissions’ central argument that the presence of Maasai pastoralists inside the NCA is incompatible with conservation.
The group said that for generations, the Maasai have lived in Ngorongoro in co-existence with wildlife, and that their traditional knowledge and communal land management practices have “sustained this ecosystem for centuries.”
The group also accused the commissions of ignoring the environmental impact of commercial tourism, noting that the rapid expansion of luxury lodges, roads, hunting, and safari traffic within the NCA was entirely absent from the reports’ analysis.
“These omissions reveal a clear bias: pastoralist communities are blamed, while commercial interests are treated as environmentally neutral,” MISA said.
Admissions without accountability
MISA said it welcomed one finding from the relocation commission — the acknowledgement that the relocation exercise since 2021 had not been genuinely voluntary.
The group said this confirmed what it had long maintained: that communities were subjected to “unacceptable restrictions on basic services, land access, and social infrastructure” that effectively coerced them to leave “through deprivation rather than choice.”
However, MISA condemned both commissions for failing to hold any government official accountable for the mistreatment of Maasai residents, including what it described as the deliberate grounding of the Flying Medical Service, which it said had devastating consequences for community health.
READ MORE: Maasai Raise Alarm Over Delayed Ngorongoro Commission Reports, Demand Accountability
On the contested Pololeti Game Reserve, MISA welcomed the commissions’ acknowledgement that Loliondo residents want their land back, but condemned the reports for failing to address the legality of the reserve’s creation.
The group said the 1,500 square kilometres of village land in Loliondo were “illegally and violently converted” to a game reserve in 2022.
MISA also rejected the commissions’ characterisation of Lake Natron as a Game Controlled Area, noting that the area encompasses 26 villages and more than 70,000 people, and that Tanzanian law prohibits the establishment of a Game Controlled Area on village land.
Arrests and propaganda
MISA raised an alarm over events that followed the submission of the commission reports to the President.
It said the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) produced a documentary that “mirrors the Land Commission’s executive summary and amplifies the state propaganda” the group has witnessed since 2021, and which it described as promoting “degrading narratives about NCA residents that we consider racist and discriminatory.”
The group also reported that on March 15, 2026 — three days after the reports were presented — rangers from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) arrested three Ngorongoro residents in the Ndutu area and ordered them to vacate their land to make way for the expansion of tourism activities.
Demands
MISA closed its statement with a series of unequivocal positions.
The group said it would not accept any relocation from its ancestral lands, would not accept any amendments to the NCA Act that could be used to legalise evictions, and would “resort to mass peaceful action” to resist any attempt to remove the legal protections granted to the Maasai community after they were displaced from the Serengeti in the 1950s.
The group called on the government to stop the harassment of herders across Pololeti, Ndutu, Oldupai, and other areas, and demanded that management of the NCA be placed in the hands of indigenous peoples.
It also called on the international donor community, conservation organisations, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and UNESCO to “support the Maasai Conservation Vision and stop promoting conservation models that do not respect Indigenous Peoples and their territories.”
“Our position is firm,” MISA concluded. “We will remain on our land. We want genuine dialogue, not oppression.”
