Law and its impact on Kenya's Indigenous communities' Land Rights: The Opportunities

For those communities in Kenya that identify as indigenous, and with the indigenous movement, land is the core of their collective existence. To remove them from their ancestral lands violates their customary rights to land and says to them that they do not matter. For years they have been the victims of those in power who have used their political influence as well as the law to denigrate and invalidate those rights.

This has been through forced assimilation of these communities into larger groups, forced evictions, damaging of property, killings, inhuman and degrading treatment; and broken promises. Judgments of regional bodies under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights framework affirming those rights have gone unimplemented. This thesis therefore looks at what law has been, what it is and what it could do with a particular focus on the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and its harbingeron land- the National Land Policy 2009. Alternatives existing under the East African Community Treaty and also the World Bank’s framework on indigenous communities, -are also examined. The conclusion reached is that land in Kenya is a political chalice, howbeit, progressive law has been enacted. This must have an intended purpose, and where that purpose is not fulfilled, law may as well not exist. There is opportunity in the law for both communities and law makers to close in on this disparateness and bring out the realisation of these land rights