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.

The Civil Society commends the Ministry of Lands for spearheading the important process of developing the Draft National Policy, and affirms that land is central to the livelihoods of most Kenyans and as such its access, use, ownership, administration and distribution are of key national concern. Thus, having critically examined the Draft Policy we do hereby make our position on the way forward on the salient policy proposals of the Draft National Land Policy document.

This booklet reveals that women only got 103,043 titles representing 10.3 percent, while men got 865,095 titles representing 86.5 percent of the total. The glaring disparity is made clear when looked at against the actual land sizes and titled for women against men. The data sample shows that out of 10,129,704 hectares of land titled between 2013 and 2017 women got 163,253 hectares representing a paltry 1.62 while men got 9,903,304 hectares representing 97.76 percent.

A majority of the Kenyan population live in rural areas accessing land and natural resources through customary systems and institutions that operate largely outside the mainstream legal framework of land administration. Although there are clear provisions in the Constitution and the Trust Land Act on management of trust land there appears to be an unwritten policy on the part of government that sees community land as land that is not owned but rather is available for County Councils and government to appropriate through the setting apart procedure

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 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.

This analysis and recommendations stem from USAID/Kenya’s request for an assessment of Kenya’s draft National Land Policy (dNLP).4 It was conducted under the global task order: Property Rights and Resource Governance Program, a mechanism designed and supervised by USAID-EGAT’s Land Resources Management Team under the Office of Natural Resources Management.

The Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) is a focal point for information sharing and networking among those pressing for land reform in Kenya. It was formed in 1999 by members of civil society to propose reforms both to the Commission on the Review of Land Laws, appointed by the President, and the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, appointed by Parliament. Over the last two years, the KLA has coordinated a programme of research on land issues in Kenya by member organisations

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.

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).

About 3.5 billion people live in countries rich in oil, gas or minerals. With good governance and transparent management, the revenues from extractive sector can have positive impacts leading to poverty reduction hence boosting shared prosperity , while respecting both the needs of the community and the environment. The extractive sector in Kenya contributes about one (1) per cent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and three (3) per cent of the total export earnings.

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.