Milka Chepkorir is a young Indigenous woman from the Sengwer Indigenous Peoples of Cherang’any Hills, Kenya. For years, she has been working with her community to address communal land tenure issues in their ancestral lands, the Embobut and Kabolet forests. Due to a lack of recognition of her community’s land rights, the community has faced many human rights violations through evictions by the government of Kenya, all in the name of forest conservation. Milka has a special interest in gender issues and has been working with women and elders in her community to ensure women are included in the community’s land rights struggles. Together with the women in Embobut and Kabolet, she helped develop a cultural centre where the community hopes to carry out Indigenous education classes to educate the youth and children about the Sengwer Indigenous knowledge and systems, most of which have been lost or are diminishing. Milka coordinates the “Defending Territories of Life” stream of work, for Africa, at the ICCA Consortium. She was previously the Coordinator of Community Land Action NOW! (CLAN), a Kenyan movement of communities working to register their lands as community lands under the Community Land Act 2016.

Milka has been actively involved in International policy processes involving Indigenous Peoples rights to their lands, resources, clean environment and water.