Ilemi Triangle

The Ilemi Triangle is an area of disputed land in East Africa. Arbitrarily defined, it measures between 10,320 and 14,000 square kilometres (3,985 and 5,405 sq mi). Named after Anuak chief Ilemi Akwon, the territory is claimed by South Sudan and Kenya and borders Ethiopia. Despite use and raids by tribes within Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government has never made an official claim on any of the Ilemi and in fact agreed that the land was all Sudanese in the 1902, 1907, and 1972 treaties.

Kenya now has de facto control of the area. The dispute arose from unclear wording of the 1914 treaty in which the provisional straight parallel was a temporary line to be used only until a new line (not finalised until the 1930s) could allow for the movements of the Turkana people—nomadic herders who had traditionally grazed the area. The perceived economic marginality of the land as well as decades of Sudanese conflicts are two factors that have delayed the resolution of the dispute.

The nomadic Turkana move in the territory between South Sudan and Kenya and have been vulnerable to attacks from surrounding peoples. The other peoples in this area are the Didinga and Topasa in South Sudan, and the Nyangatom (Inyangatom) who move between South Sudan and Ethiopia, and the Dassanech who live east of the triangle in Ethiopia.

These pastoral people have historically engaged in razzia raids on livestock. While in the past they used traditional weapons, since the nineteenth century onwards the use of firearms has been common.

To the southeast of the Ilemi, Ethiopian emperor Menelik laid claim to Lake Turkana and proposed a boundary with the British to run from the southern end of the lake eastward to the Indian Ocean, which was shifted northward when the British and Ethiopian governments signed a treaty in 1907, reaffirmed by a 1970 Ethiopia-Kenya treaty.

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