For historical reasons, Kenya inherited a highly skewed system of land ownership at independence in 1963. British colonialism in Kenya was not merely administrative. Rather, it was accompanied by massive and widespread land alienation for the benefit of settler agriculture. As a result the best agricultural land-the White Highlands and the adjacent rangelands were taken from the Africans, without compensation, and parceled out to white settlers. Colonial legislation was enacted to legalize this process.

Institutional framework for land administration and management being a whole set of services that make the land tenure system within Kenya socially, ecologically and economically relevant and operational has generally failed to operationalise the general functional components of land administration i.e. juridical, regulatory, fiscal, cadastral and adjudicative, efficiently. This is because land administration structures and infrastructures are perceived as factors external to the land tenure system itself.

The Historical Injustices Issues Paper seeks to present the various historical land claims issues and perspective related to them and consequently proffer policy statements for their redress.

This report, which focuses on Kenya, constitutes one of four country-wide assessments produced under the overall project. It draws on a literature review conducted by the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) with additional inputs from IIED, as well as on primary field research conducted by KLA in April 2016 (see Section 1.2 for further information about the research methodology).

The KLA proposed constitutional principles on land reform as captured in the constitutional draft have become more pronounced with the approach of General Elections and the transition that is expected to see the departure of President Moi from leadership. We therefore, detest the frantic efforts to go to the forthcoming elections before adopting the Ghai draft constitution, because that will be endangering the aroused expectation that at long last we are on the road to sorting out land problems we have lived with since independence.

For a long time the issue of land and related problems has been debated mostly by academicians, politicians and professionals. Although the problem has remained more or less one of the most talked of in Kenya, the public has very often been left out of the debate. Again mostly the debate has been dominated more by complaining about either the lack of policy or the bad land policies and laws and the failure by successive governments to correct those problems.

The first set of the land laws were enacted in 2012 in line with the timelines outlined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010. In keeping with the spirit of the constitution, the Land Act, Land Registration Act and the national Land Commission Act respond to the requirements of Articles 60, 61, 62, 67 & 68 of the Constitution.

The World Social Forum in Nairobi in January 2007 was a timely New Year rallying event for Kenyans to revisit the fundamental principles for building a democratic and sustainable society as we prepare for December 2007 elections.The current organizing principles of the institutions that govern us in Kenya are narrow and serve the few at the expense of the many millions of Kenyans that live in abject poverty. Yet, from all corners of the country it is acknowledged that it is within our collective ability to create a healthy and sustainable society that serves and work for all

The figures of public resources estimated to have been channeled into private pockets are so high one hopes, obviously against hope, that they would turn out to be typographical errors. The figures of public resources estimated to have been channeled into private pockets are so high one hopes, obviously against hope, that they would turn out to be typographical errors.

Throughout this pocket size booklet, Land Reform Volume 4, KLA proposes that collectively as a nation, and especially during this time of the constitutional review process. The principles outlined be embraced with the purpose of providing women a deliberate opportunity to engage in decision-making as regards land-use,management and ownership.

The National Land Policy in Kenya: Critical Public Land Issues and Policy Statements is a guide to steer the debate and eventual formulation of a National Land Policy and legislative framework that will address issues of management and administration of public land in Kenya.

The International Land Coalition (ILC) has commissioned this present report to analyze the illegal/irregular acquisition of land by Kenya’s elites to ascertain the types of land affected, the processes used to acquire land, and the profiles of the perpetrators, as well as to identify the victims and the impacts of land grabbing. The report is drawn largely from the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA)’s series “Unjust Enrichment: The Making of Land Grabbing Millionaires”,