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hpg HPG Policy Brief 31 Humanitarian Policy Group April 2008

Crisis in : land, displacement and the search for ‘durable solutions’

Key messages processes should not be promoted as durable solutions in the absence of • Current post-election displacement in serious attempts to resolve land-related Kenya is not a new phenomenon but a grievances. If durable solutions are to be recurring trend linked to unresolved land found, programmes must take account of grievances, in a context of poor those who were forced to move in earlier governance and socio-economic waves of displacement. insecurity. This is of concern to • The government’s urgency in humanitarians as the failure to encouraging IDPs to return despite understand the dynamics involved and continued political uncertainty and the implications for recovery can insecurity raises clear protection HPG Policy Briefs aim to provide an exacerbate tensions and jeopardise concerns. This includes both physical objective guide to the key policy attempts to resolve the crisis. security and wider issues to do with issues on a given topic. • Humanitarians need to engage with land rights, community reconciliation and specialists to ensure that their sustainable access to the means of Readers are encouraged to quote programming not only avoids subsistence. or reproduce materials from this exacerbating tensions, but is also •In the absence of political progress and publication but, as copyright stability, urbanisation is likely to holders, ODI requests due consistent with efforts to address the acknowledgement and a copy of structural causes of conflict. accelerate as displaced people seek the publication. This and other HPG •Return, relocation and local integration alternative livelihoods. Policy Briefs are available from www.odi.org.uk/hpg.

Overseas Development Institute Accusations of irregularities during the it was still unclear whether a political 111 Westminster Bridge Road December 2007 elections in Kenya sparked agreement reached between President Mwai London SE1 7JD widespread violence. Over 1,000 people were Kibaki and Prime Minister-designate Raila United Kingdom killed and as many as 600,000 displaced from Odinga would resolve the crisis. Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 their homes. Apart from the immediate Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 humanitarian implications, the economic cost Events in Kenya took the international E-mail: [email protected] of the crisis is put at over Ksh100 billion community by surprise, not least because the Websites: www.odi.org.uk/hpg (around $1.5bn). Jobs have been lost, and country is usually held up as a model of and www.odihpn.org people have not been able to harvest or stability in an increasingly fragile region. Yet cultivate their farms.1 Meanwhile, the ethnic violence and displacement accompanied character of the violence has put Kenya’s elections throughout the 1990s, leading some coherence as a nation in doubt.2 Although by commentators to warn that Kenya’s long-term April 2008 the violence had largely subsided, stability was in jeopardy.3 Central to both past

1 International Crisis Group, Kenya in Crisis, Africa 3 See for example Internal Displacement Monitoring Overseas Development Centre, ‘I Am a Refugee In My Own Country’: Conflict- Institute Report 137, 2008, pp. 1, 19. 2 Africa Research Institute, Kenya: A Nation Induced Internal Displacement in Kenya (Geneva: Fragmented, Briefing Note 0801, 2008. IDMC, 2006), pp. 6–7. HPG Briefing 31 crc 25/4/08 11:29 am Page 2

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and current upheavals have been long-standing million (revised upwards from $40m).6 The initial disputes over land ownership. This HPG Policy Brief appeal was 74% funded. There has also been a explores the role that land issues have played in concerted response by civil society organisations, the current crisis, and why it is essential that particularly Church associations such as the humanitarian actors understand these issues as National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), they seek to assist displaced populations and which has historically played a significant role in facilitate the process of return or resettlement. assisting IDPs.

Post-election violence, displacement From consultations with key informants, it is and the humanitarian response generally believed that the basic needs of the displaced in camps, in terms of protection, food, The violence began when Kibaki’s Party of National education, health, water and sanitation, have largely Unity (PNU) declared victory in the elections. In been met, although the humanitarian response has response, the opposition Orange Democratic suffered from a lack of access due to insecurity, with Movement (ODM) claimed widespread irregularities roadblocks delaying the provision of relief. There and fraud, sparking rioting across the country have been some reports of national staff being between supporters of the rival parties. The unrest targeted because of their ethnicity. Sexual also enabled some groups to act on long-standing exploitation, mainly of women and children, has grievances over land, and forcible appropriation been widely noted, in the camps and elsewhere. has led to large-scale displacement, particularly in Furthermore, with the passage of time and the arrival the Rift Valley and western Kenya. of the rainy season, concerns have been raised over conditions in some of the camps. The fate of Estimates of the current number of IDPs range from displaced people outside of the camps is meanwhile 400,000 to 600,000, though patterns of dis- unclear. Accurate data does not exist and there is no placement are fluid and accurate data is difficult to mechanism to identify, locate and assess their needs obtain.4 What seems clear is that many of the and intentions. This is a significant failing. displaced – perhaps as many as half – are not in camps, but have sought refuge with host families, In short, immediate relief requirements, for camp- often in their so-called ‘ancestral homelands’. The based IDPs at any rate, have largely been met caseload includes landowners and farmers from through the combined efforts of communities the Rift Valley, who have fled to nearby towns and themselves, the government, civil society organis- camps; migrant workers from the Rift Valley and ations, aid agencies and international donors. For , who are moving back towards many, the concern is now security in home areas: western Kenya; and urban dwellers and business displaced people feel unable to return until the owners from main cities such as , , government addresses this issue, both in terms of , and .5 These are in physical security and in its wider socio-economic addition to pre-existing IDPs displaced by clashes and legal sense. The situation remains highly during the 1990s, mainly located in Molo, Kuresoi, complex and volatile, and is likely to deteriorate Burnt Forest and Mount Eglon. A further 12,000 further unless the underlying causal factors are refugees are thought to have fled across the border addressed. Here, resolving disputes over land must into . play a central role.

The Kenyan government has led the humanitarian The land question and displacement response through the Ministry of Special in Kenya Programmes (MoSP). Within the ministry the National Disaster Operations Centre acts as the Internal displacement is a recurring theme in Kenya’s coordinating agent, with the Kenyan Red Cross recent history. During the colonial period, British land (KRCS) the official implementing partner. The policy favoured (white) settler agriculture, entailing government’s response has been supported by the the dispossession of many indigenous communities’ international community. The cluster approach has land (mainly the Kalenjin, Maasai and Kikuyu) across been activated and an Emergency Humanitarian the Rift Valley and Nyanza, Western and Central Response Plan was launched in April for $190 provinces – the so-called White Highlands. This process was legalised with the implementation of an 4 The estimate of 600,000 is the UN figure. See ‘Some individual freehold title registration system at the 600,000 Displaced in Kenya’, BBC News, 11 February 2008, 7 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7239234.stm. The expense of customary mechanisms of land tenure. Kenyan Red Cross Society (KRCS) estimates that over The land grievances colonial dispossession gave rise 200,000 IDPs are residing in camps, and it is widely believed among aid agencies that there is an equivalent 6 UN, Kenya: Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan. number of non-camp IDPs. KRCS Kenya Humanitarian 7 Kenya Land Alliance, Righting the Wrongs: Historical Forum Meeting, 28 March 2008. Injustices and Land Reforms in Kenya, Policy Brief (Nairobi: 5 OCHA Humanitarian Update, 16–19 February 2008. KLA, 2004), pp. 1–2.

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Kenya – IDP situation map

Sudan Number of IDPs per district Ethiopia <1,ooo 1,000–10,000

10,001–30,000 Eastern Uganda

Rift Valley >30,000

Western North Somalia Eastern Nyanza Central Rift Valley

Nairobi province Coast Turkana Tanzania

Samburu West Pokot

Trans Nzoia Marakwet

Baringo Mount Elgon

Western Lugari Teso

Uasin Busia Laikipia Butere Gishu Keiyo Kakamega Koibatek Nandi

Kisumu Bondo Nyando Nyandarua

Kericho Nakuru Rachuonyo Nyanza Buret Central Kirinyaga Suba Central Kisii Muranga Gucha Maragua Migori Trans Mara

Kuria Nairobi Eastern

Source: KRC March 2008, Kenya Humanitarian Forum Meeting, 28 March 2008 3 HPG Briefing 31 crc 25/4/08 11:29 am Page 4

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to were aggravated by Jomo Kenyatta’s independent government. Kenyatta maintained the system of Box 1: Land, displacement and freehold land titles and did not question how the humanitarian action land had been acquired. To compensate the displaced, the government began a series of Humanitarian agencies often lack an adequate resettlement schemes based on a market system, understanding of land issues – ownership, use which was biased towards those with the financial and access – and tend to dismiss the problem as means to acquire land.8 Meanwhile, corruption and too complex, politically sensitive or outside ethnic politics supported patronage networks and their remit.12 Yet conflicts over land often drive favoured certain communities, particularly the complex emergencies, particularly in agrarian Kikuyu, who settled in the fertile areas of the Rift societies were land is central to livelihoods. Valley, at the expense of others, such as the Luo, the Forced displacement and appropriation can be a Maasai and the Kalenjin. means to reward allies, acquire or secure access to resources, manipulate elections or create These land tensions were further exacerbated by ethnically homogenous areas.13 Even where Kenyatta’s successor as president, Daniel arap Moi. land is not a central driver, secondary conflicts In response to the political threat posed by the can emerge, particularly if there is protracted advent of multiparty politics in the 1990s, Moi (a displacement and land is occupied opportunisti- Kalenjin) sought to portray the opposition as Kikuyu- cally. The result is often overlapping or compet- led, and multiparty politics as an exclusionary ethnic ing land rights and claims, lost or destroyed project to control land.9 This entailed evoking documents, lack of adequate housing stock and majimboism, a type of federalism that promotes increased land pressure, often in the absence of provincial autonomy based on ethnicity. To recover an institutional framework that can effectively ‘stolen’ land, Kikuyu were evicted from the areas 14 they had settled in the Rift Valley and western resolve these conflicts. Policy responses usu- Kenya.10 Associated clashes throughout the 1990s ally favour returning populations to their areas left thousands dead and over 350,000 displaced, of origin or habitual residence and the restitu- allowing Moi to gerrymander elections in 1992 and tion of land and property. Often, however, dis- 1997.11 Rampant land-grabbing further undermined placed people have no land to return to, or are customary mechanisms of land governance, while unable to access their properties. They may growing hardship among the majority poor and rapid have had no alternative but to occupy someone population growth increased pressure on the else’s land, or they may be in direct competition country’s arable land. for land with other groups, including the state.15 For all of these reasons, land issues pose a sub- The displacement crisis following the 2007 stantial challenge to humanitarian agencies as elections is thus not an anomaly; rather, it is part they engage in the assisted return, reintegration of a sequence of recurrent displacement stemming and recovery of displaced populations. from unresolved and politically aggravated land grievances, in a context of population growth, poor governance and socio-economic insecurity. Simply by the post-election violence to return to their focusing on facilitating the return of people homes. In order to support this process a fund of displaced in the current crisis, in the absence of Ksh1bn ($15m) has been established, and the efforts to address the underlying structural international community has been asked to causes, risks creating the conditions for further contribute a substantially larger amount, to be rounds of violence and fresh displacement. administered by the newly created Mitigation and Resettlement Unit within the MoSP. In this

The search for ‘durable solutions’ 12 HPG conference report, Uncharted Territory: Land, Conflict and Humanitarian Action, February 2008, http://www.odi.org. Despite continuing political uncertainty, the uk/hpg/meetings/land-conference-note.pdf. Kenyan government has called for those displaced 13 A. De Waal, ‘Why Do Humanitarian Agencies Need To Tackle Land Issues?’, paper presented at the HPG 8 Kenya Land Alliance, The National Land Policy in Kenya: conference Uncharted Territory: Land, Conflict and Addressing Historical Injustices Issues Paper No. 2/2004 Humanitarian Action, February 2008. (Nairobi: KLA), pp. 6–7. 14 C. Huggins, ‘Land in Return, Reintegration and Recovery 9 J. Klopp, ‘Kenya’s Internally Displaced: Managing Civil Processes: Some Lessons from the Great Lakes Region of Conflict in Democratic Transitions’ in D. Bekoe (ed.), East Africa’, paper presented at the HPG conference Uncharted Africa and the Horn: Confronting Challenges to Good Territory: Land, Conflict and Humanitarian Action, February Governance, International Peace Academy Occasional Paper 2008. Series (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006). 15 L. Alden Wily, ‘“It’s More Than About Going Home”. Land 10 P. Kamungi, ‘Land and Internal Displacement in Kenya’, in Emergency to Development Transitions in Conflict States: briefing for donors at the Canadian High Commission, Who Should Do What?’, paper presented at the HPG Nairobi, 11 September 2007. conference Uncharted Territory: Land, Conflict and 11 Klopp, ‘Kenya’s Internally Displaced’. Humanitarian Action, February 2008.

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endeavour, the government will seek to increase that normality has resumed. According to physical security in the areas from which people government estimates, most IDPs should have were displaced, rehabilitate key services, provide returned within 100 days. Given the complex assistance for the first three months of return and conditions IDPs have placed on their return, such promote and engage in reconciliation activities.16 an arbitrary deadline is both unfeasible and unhelpful, and could see some returned against Despite these pledges by the government, return their will. Nor does such a rapid response allow has so far been limited and isolated. Some 50,000 time to instigate the processes needed to ensure a IDPs from Kakamega have returned to their home viable, durable return. Even if the conditions for areas and people displaced close to their homes return are deemed to be in place, such a process are commuting to work on their farms; overall, should not be framed as a durable solution but however, people are reluctant to return, rather a temporary stop-gap until such time as particularly in areas affected by land disputes. IDPs clear processes are established to tackle are calling for preconditions, such as assurances unresolved land issues and other related on security, systems to compensate for or restore grievances. Such processes must enjoy the lost property and measures to ensure that land support of leading local and national politicians. issues are resolved. Many, particularly those with no, lost or destroyed titles, are sceptical that such The alternatives to return outlined in the IASC conditions will be met, and are asking to be framework are relocation and local integration. IDPs resettled in alternative sites, including in main who do not have land or who are too traumatised to urban areas such as Nairobi. return seem to favour resettlement on alternative sites, but this is a complex process and cannot be The government has pledged to adhere to considered durable unless accompanied by a international guiding principles on IDP return, resolution of the land question more broadly. In any resettlement and reintegration. In addition, the case, resettlement may simply aggravate existing Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has land grievances, particularly in areas such as Central developed a framework designed to ensure a and Nairobi provinces, where population density is ‘durable solution’, covering return, relocation high and land scarce. Furthermore, solely focusing on (settlement in another part of the country, those that have been recently displaced, as is including movement to ethnically homogeneous currently the case among both the government and areas or so-called ‘ancestral homelands’, where the humanitarian community, will create resentment the IDP has links to extended family or to an among long-term IDPs (including the wider landless), identifiable ethnic group) and local integration in who have been waiting many years to be resettled areas of refuge.17 As is usually the case in and are currently living in very difficult conditions. situations like this, the preferred option, for the government, donors and the humanitarian Relocating IDPs to so-called ‘ancestral homelands’ is community, is the return of the displaced to their of particular concern. While this may offer a areas of former residence. This is seen as less temporary refuge for communities that have controversial than other options, which might lead retained strong ties with their extended families, to significant changes in the structure of a society, many host families are starting to reject the and is a visible and quantifiable process. continued presence of displaced people for fear that Furthermore, it is in line with international they will make claims on their land. Resettlement in standards such as the Principles on Housing and areas of ethnic kinship also sets a dangerous Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced precedent as it implicitly supports the goals of those Persons (the Pinheiro Principles), which call for the engaged in violence and displacement as a means of restitution of land and property to the displaced.18 ethnically cleansing certain regions. It also fails to take into account that the concept of ‘ancestral In the current crisis, there is a sense that return homeland’ is often an artificial construction of the must happen soon, so that some at least of the colonial state, rather than a reflection of historical displaced can tend to their lands ahead of the rains rootedness.19 Ethnicity is not a static, homogenous and the upcoming planting season. The govern- entity, but rather a fluid concept subject to ment is also keen to show that the crisis is over and generations of intermarriage.20 Any efforts to return IDPs to presumed ‘homelands’ would need to 16 Report of the National Accord Implementation Committee on National Reconciliation and Emergency Social determine which communities actually belong to and Economic Recovery Strategy, March 2008. certain areas, and how far back in history one would 17 IASC, IASC Steps Towards Durable Solutions to Post- Election Displacement in Kenya (Nairobi: IASC, 2008). 19 J. Lonsdale, ‘Soil, Work, Civilisation and Citizenship in 18 For more information on the Pinheiro Principles and their Kenya’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, forthcoming. implementation, see Multi-agency Handbook, Housing and 20 Personal communication with Dr. Lotte Hughes, Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons: Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, The Open Implementing the ‘Pinheiro Principles’, 2007. University.

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need to go to find this out, a process that would surely further divide Kenya’s communities and could Box 2: Urbanisation even threaten the country’s cohesion. Complex emergencies tend to represent funda- The third possibility – integrating the displaced in mental processes of change and societal transfor- the areas where they have sought refuge – depends mation.23 These changes can often accelerate the on their characteristics and the willingness of both process of urbanisation as the displaced migrate the displaced and host communities to accept to urban centres in search of safety and alterna- integration. In reality, pressures on local resources tive livelihood strategies. Displaced people will are already high, and integrating IDPs in rural areas tend not to return to rural environments, particu- is probably not going to be feasible. In the towns larly if their land grievances are not resolved or if and cities unemployment is a serious concern, they see a brighter future in the cities. These particularly among young people, and access to trends have been seen in previous episodes of land and housing is already inadequate. Despite displacement in Kenya, where the government these problems, if the political process stalls and has failed to support return or provide suitable land issues are not effectively tackled it is likely that resettlement schemes. As a result, the majority of urban migration will accelerate, which means that IDPs live in informal urban settlements and are the government and humanitarian agencies must marginalised amongst the urban poor. prepare to support integration in urban areas. These efforts need to be linked with the government’s wider recovery strategy, which aims and portraying return as a durable solution in the to improve services in slum areas and increase absence of clear processes to resolve the underlying employment opportunities, and must be carried out issues giving rise to it risks embedding the in partnership with development agencies conditions for further violence in the future. If a concerned with tackling the wider problems of durable solution is to be achieved, historical socio-economic insecurity in the urban peripheries grievances must be acknowledged and addressed.24 where the bulk of IDPs live. Questions of land This goes beyond the core humanitarian agenda, but tenure will also demand attention: many of the is nevertheless an important element in the way displaced will squat in public buildings or other humanitarians engage in relief and return processes. public spaces, threatening the informal property interests of the existing urban poor.21 The expertise Although many of these grievances have been of development agencies engaged in urban acknowledged, it is not yet clear whether adequate planning will be needed to support measures to processes will be put in place to address them. As a secure tenure for the displaced and the wider result, many local communities oppose the return of population of concern. displaced people, and displaced people themselves are not keen to go back to contested areas. The Any solution to displacement, whether temporary or possibility of coerced return raises clear protection durable, must enjoy the active participation of concerns, particularly given the government’s stated Kenyan civil society, particularly the faith-based desire to ‘resolve’ the displacement problem as organisations that have historically played an rapidly as possible. The humanitarian community important role in supporting IDPs.22 These groups should be very cautious about facilitating return in will be important stakeholders in promoting the absence of adequate physical and socio- reconciliation and peace-building activities, and will economic security. Well-informed advocacy, which bring important pressure to bear on the government incorporates land tenure expertise, is required to to effectively deal with the issues outlined in the encourage the government to meet its obligations to political agreement between Kibaki and Odinga. ensure that the conditions for return are in place. If such processes are to represent a truly durable Conclusion solution, they must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of historical grievances and the This HPG Policy Brief has sought to highlight the need for reconciliation processes. In the absence of importance of land issues in forced displacement in such change, it is imperative that the humanitarian Kenya, and to draw out their implications for current community monitors the fate of IDPs after their humanitarian and early recovery interventions in the return, to ensure that their rights are protected and wake of the violence and displacement that followed their needs met. the 2007 elections. Even before the latest crisis, 23 See for example M. Duffield, Global Governance and the grievances over land had generated over 350,000 New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security IDPs. Displacement is thus not a new phenomenon, (London: Zed, 2003), p. 14. 24 J. Klopp, ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump Political Tribalism? 21 Alden Wily, ‘“It’s More Than About Going Home”’. The Struggle for Land and Nation in Kenya’, African Studies, 22 Klopp, ‘Kenya’s Internally Displaced’. vol. 61, no. 2, 2002.

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Recommendations

• Humanitarian agencies must be better process stalls and displacement becomes informed about the underlying causes of protracted. This will require engagement with displacement, including grievances over land. development organisations in order to align This will help ensure that their responses do efforts to integrate IDPs, whilst addressing not aggravate existing sources of tension, and wider socio-economic insecurity in urban are aligned with processes that aim to resolve areas. the fundamental issues at stake. The housing, •The recovery process must include a land and property sub-cluster and the early systematic mechanism to collect adequate recovery cluster should engage more deeply data on IDPs inside and outside camps, and with land tenure specialists. from previous displacements, in order to • Humanitarian agencies should ensure that determine their profile, needs and intentions the protection needs of displaced people are so that interventions can be catered to them. met, and should resist premature returns that The data should also include relevant threaten the security of IDPs. In the absence information on land, and land tenure of mass return, the needs of the displaced specialists should be enlisted to help collect should continue to be met. and analyse the data. Efforts in this direction •Return to areas affected by land grievances by national and international agencies should should not be promoted as a durable solution be coordinated and shared with the but rather as a temporary measure, to be government. accompanied by clear efforts to resolve the •The search for durable solutions needs to underlying causes of displacement. include civil society organisations, which have •Permanently relocating IDPs to so-called an important role to play in promoting ‘ancestral homelands’ risks promoting ethnic reconciliation and peace-building, and in cleansing and further fragmenting Kenya’s exerting pressure on the government to tackle communities, leading to renewed outbreaks the underlying causes of displacement. of violence. It should not be promoted as a •Donors should ensure that their support to durable solution to Kenya’s displacement the Kenyan government is contingent on crisis. adequate conditions for return, including • Agencies should prepare for an influx of IDPs progress in addressing underlying issues, into urban areas, particularly if the political including land.

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hpg Humanitarian Policy Group

Overseas Development Institute 111 Westminster Bridge Road London SE1 7JD United Kingdom Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 E-mail: [email protected] Websites: www.odi.org.uk/hpg and www.odihpn.org

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