Stanley Kimaren ole Riamit

Kimaren is a holder of a Master of Arts degree in Development Anthropology from McGill University in Canada, and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Project Planning and Management, from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), and a BSc. degree in Foods, Nutrition and Dietetics from Egerton University, Kenya.
Ole Riamit is an Indigenous peoples’ leader from the Pastoralists Maasai Community in southern Kenya. His is the Founder-Director of Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA) a community based Indigenous Peoples organization based in Kenya. The organization is a non-for-profit Indigenous organization for human rights, Environment and development serving Indigenous Pastoralists communities in Kenya. ILEPA serves as the Secretariat of a Pan-African Dialogue platform for CSOs and IPs Observers to REDD+ related processes.
Kimaren has extensive exposure and experience in engaging with and influencing international processes and mechanism of interests to Indigenous peoples, in which he has represented the global indigenous Peoples movement in various capacities. He has for example served as Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), Anglophone African representatives to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and most recently as Southern CSOs Active Observer to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) among other important portfolios.
Kimaren is a researcher and field instructor for two distinct international Field study programs undertaken in East Africa associated with two overseas Universities since 2009, namely, Utrecht University College in the Netherlands and the Canadian Field School in Africa (CFSIA) under the leadership of McGill University. The two programs focus on a wide range of issues related to development discourse and praxis, including participatory processes, Inclusion and Indigenous Peoples rights and their livelihoods and environmental conservation among other themes.
As a researcher, ole Riamit has undertaken and published a number of research work on issues related to Climate change impacts on Indigenous Peoples, the place of Indigenous Knowledge systems and customary institutions in climate change response measures, land tenure security and natural resource management. Kimaren is an accomplished facilitated and interlocutor. He has facilitated high profile conferences and workshops related to climate change and REDD+ in the context of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Specifically, he has facilitated REDD+ and indigenous Peoples and local communities related workshop in partnership with the World Bank group of Companies including the International Colloquium held in Kenya with forest dependent communities amongst others.
Ole Riamit is interested in Anthropology of Development, human rights and governance. He is primarily interested in the discourses of development, development institutions, how development is impacting grassroots communities in Africa, and social movements that are challenging prevailing forms of development pathways, from an indigenous Peoples Perspective. Specifically, how property, rights to land and natural resources, decision making-arrangement interact to safeguard or impede rights to basic indigenous peoples’ survival.