Accusations of irregularities during the December 2007 elections in Kenya sparked widespread violence. Over 1000 people were killed and an estimated 500,000 displaced from their homes.1 Apart from the immediate humanitarian implications, the economic cost of the crisis was put at over Ksh100 billion (around $1.5 billion). Jobs were lost, and people were unable to harvest or cultivate their farms. Meanwhile, the ethnic character of the violence put Kenya's coherence as a nation in doubt (Africa Research Institute 2008). These events took the international community by surprise, not least because the country is usually held up as a model of stability in a largely fragile region. Yet violence and displacement accompanied elections throughout the 1990s, with some commentators warning of future instability if the underlying causes of this violence were left unresolved (IDMC 2006). Central to both past and current upheavals have been long-standing disputes over land ownership.
Post-election Violence, Displacement and the Humanitarian Response
The violence began when Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) declared victory in the elections. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) claimed widespread irregularities and fraud, sparking rioting across the country between supporters of the rival parties. The unrest enabled some groups to act on long-standing grievances over land, and forcible appropriation has led to large-scale displacement, particularly in the Rift Valley and western Kenya.
Estimates of the number of IDPs at the height of the crisis stood at around 500,000, although patterns of displacement are fluid and accurate data was difficult to obtain. What seems clear is that many of the displaced – perhaps as many as half – were not in camps, but sought refuge with host families, often in their so-called ‘ancestral homelands’. This group of IDPs included landowners and farmers from the Rift Valley who fled to nearby towns and camps; migrant workers from the Rift Valley and Central Province, who moved back towards western Kenya; and urban dwellers and business owners from main cities such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nakuru and Naivasha (OCHA 2008). These are in addition to pre-existing IDPs displaced by clashes during the 1990s, mainly located in Molo, Kuresoi, Burnt Forest and Mount Elgon. A further 12,000 refugees fled across the border into Uganda.
The Kenyan government led the humanitarian response through the Ministry of Special Programmes (MoSP). Within the ministry the National Disaster Operations Centre acted as the coordinating agent, with the Kenyan Red Cross (KRCS) the official implementing partner. The government's response was supported by international organisations, with an Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan launched in April 2008 for US$207 million (UN 2008). There was also a concerted response by civil society organisations, particularly Church associations such as the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), which has historically played a significant role in assisting IDPs.
The basic needs of those that were displaced in camps, in terms of protection, food, education, health, water and sanitation, were largely met, although the humanitarian response suffered from a lack of access due to insecurity, with roadblocks delaying the provision of relief. There were some reports of national staff being targeted because of their ethnicity. Sexual exploitation, mainly of women and children, was also widely noted, in the camps and elsewhere (IRIN News 2008). Furthermore, with the passage of time and the arrival of the rainy season, concerns were raised over conditions in some of the camps. The fate of displaced people outside the camps was – and to a certain extent remains – unclear. Accurate data do not exist and there is no systematised mechanism to identify, locate and assess their needs and intentions. This is a significant failing by the government and the humanitarian community.
For many displaced people, the concern remained security in home areas: they felt unable to return until the government addressed this issue, both in terms of physical security and in its wider socio-economic and legal sense. Unless the underlying causal factors of displacement are addressed, the prospects for durable solutions will remain bleak and conditions could deteriorate and see a relapse of violence. Here, resolving disputes over land must play a central role.
The Land Question and Displacement in Kenya
Internal displacement is a recurring theme in Kenya's recent history. During the colonial period, British land policy favoured white settler agriculture, entailing the dispossession of many indigenous communities' land (mainly the Kalenjin, Maasai and Kikuyu) across the Rift Valley and Nyanza, Western and Central provinces – the so-called White Highlands (Kanyinga et al. 2008). This process was legalised with the implementation of an individual freehold title registration system at the expense of customary mechanisms of land tenure (KLA 2004a). The land grievances that this colonial dispossession gave rise to were aggravated by Jomo Kenyatta's independent government. Kenyatta maintained the system of freehold land titles and did not question how the land had been acquired. To compensate the displaced, the government began a series of resettlement schemes based on a market system, but favoured those with the financial means to acquire land (KLA 2004b). Meanwhile, corruption and ethnic politics supported patronage networks and favoured certain communities, particularly the Kikuyu, who settled in the fertile areas of the Rift Valley, at the expense of others, such as the Luo, the Maasai and the Kalenjin.
These land tensions were further exacerbated by Kenyatta's successor as president, Daniel arap Moi. In response to the political threat posed by the advent of multi-party politics in the 1990s, Moi (a Kalenjin) sought to portray the opposition as Kikuyu-led, and multi-party politics as an exclusionary ethnic project to control land (Klopp 2006). This entailed evoking majimboism, a type of federalism that promotes provincial autonomy based on ethnicity. To recover ‘stolen’ land, Kikuyu were evicted from the areas they had settled in the Rift Valley and western Kenya (Kamungi 2007). Associated clashes throughout the 1990s left thousands dead and over 350,000 displaced, allowing Moi to gerrymander elections in 1992 and 1997 (Klopp 2006). Rampant land-grabbing further undermined customary mechanisms of land governance, while growing hardship among the majority poor and rapid population growth increased pressure on the country's arable land.
The displacement crisis following the 2007 elections is thus not an anomaly; rather, it is part of a sequence of recurrent displacements stemming from unresolved and politically aggravated land grievances, in a context of population growth, poor governance and socio-economic insecurity. Simply focusing on facilitating the return of people displaced in the most recent crisis, in the absence of efforts to address the underlying structural causes, risks creating the conditions for further rounds of violence and fresh displacement.
Humanitarians and Land
Humanitarians have a poor track record when confronted with land issues. Agencies have often lacked an adequate understanding of these issues (ownership, access and use), and have tended to dismiss the problem as too complex, politically sensitive or simply outside their remit (Pantuliano 2009). This is troubling as conflicts over land often drive complex emergencies, particularly in agrarian societies were land is central to livelihoods. Forced displacement and appropriation can be a means to reward allies, acquire or secure access to resources, manipulate elections or create ethnically homogenous areas (de Waal 2009). Even where land is not a central driver, secondary conflicts can emerge, particularly if there is protracted displacement and land is occupied opportunistically. The result is often overlapping or competing land rights and claims, lost or destroyed documents, lack of adequate housing stock and increased land pressure, often in the absence of an institutional framework that can effectively resolve these conflicts (Huggins 2009). Policy responses usually favour returning populations to their areas of origin or habitual residence and the restitution of land and property. Often, however, displaced people have no land to return to, or are unable to access their properties. They may have had no alternative but to occupy someone else's land, or they may be in direct competition for land with other groups, including the state (Alden Wily 2009).
These shortcomings stem from the manner in which the humanitarian community conceptualise emergency contexts. They are understood as a breakdown or temporary aberration from a pre-conceived state of normality in which it is the role of aid agencies to provide palliative relief until there is a perceived return to that normality (Duffield 2007). In terms of forced displacement, once a conflict is deemed to have ended or a peace agreement signed, humanitarians seek to return and reintegrate those that fled to their areas of origin. Yet the relationship between war and peace is fluid; peacetime can often be characterised by different types of violence such as sexual violence or an increase in homicide rates. Peace does not necessarily lead to emancipation or freedom from exploitation and may actually be characterised by a structural violence that reinforces grievances and can lead to further conflict or a return to war. Therefore, simply returning to what was conceived to have existed before the war can reinforce these structures of violence and recreate the conditions that originally led to the outbreak of war or large-scale political violence. As David Keen (2008, p. 186) asserts, ‘we need to ask whose peace? Peace on what terms? Peace in whose interest? Peace negotiated by which individuals or groups?’
The government and humanitarian community need to ask these questions in the post-election Kenyan context to ensure that any search for durable solutions for the displaced tackle some of the underlying causes of conflict. Returning to pre-election Kenya without resolving key grievances will simply sow the seeds for future violence and displacement.
The Search for ‘Durable Solutions’
Despite continuing political uncertainty after the power sharing agreement, the Kenyan government called for those displaced by the post-election violence to return to their homes. In order to support this process, Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Return Home) was launched in which a fund of Ksh1bn ($15 million) was established, with the international community asked to contribute a substantially larger amount. The fund was administered by the newly created Mitigation and Resettlement Unit within the MoSP. In this endeavour, the government has sought to increase physical security in the areas from which people were displaced, rehabilitate key services, provide assistance for the first three months of return and promote and engage in reconciliation activities (NAIC 2008).
The government has pledged to adhere to international guiding principles on IDP return, resettlement and reintegration.2 In addition, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has developed a framework designed to ensure a ‘durable solution’, covering return, relocation (settlement in another part of the country, including movement to ethnically homogeneous areas or so-called ‘ancestral homelands’, where the IDP has links to extended family or to an identifiable ethnic group) and local integration in areas of refuge (IASC 2008). As is usually the case in situations like this, the preferred option, for the government, donors and the humanitarian community, is the return of the displaced to their areas of former residence. This is seen as less controversial than other options, which might lead to significant changes in the structure of a society, and is a visible and quantifiable process. Furthermore, it is in line with international standards such as the Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (the Pinheiro Principles), which call for the restitution of land and property to the displaced.3
In an attempt to show that the crisis would be over quickly, the government estimated that all IDPs would return in 100 days. Predictably, this did not occur, but since February 2008 the government estimates that over 290,000 IDPs have left the camps; however, many have not returned to their homes and are currently residing in transit camps, often located in proximity to their farms or contain an area of land that IDPs can cultivate (OCHA 2009). There are an estimated 42,574 IDPs living in these transit sites, many of which lack basic services, but nonetheless may become permanent settlements if their displacement becomes protracted. The fate of those that did not flee to camps is uncertain, although there are reports from agencies that many host families are unable to continue supporting their needs and there are fears that the displaced may start making claims on their land.
The main obstacles to return are continuing insecurity and uncertainty around the resolution of key land grievances. Some IDPs have spontaneously formed community lobby groups to pressure the government in supporting durable solutions. They are calling for preconditions, such as assurances on security, systems to compensate for or restore lost property and measures to ensure that land issues are resolved. Many IDPs, particularly those with no, lost or destroyed titles, are sceptical that such conditions will be met, and are asking to be resettled in alternative sites, including in main urban areas such as Nairobi.
Given the complex conditions IDPs have placed on their return, pushing for a rapid return is both unfeasible and unhelpful, and can potentially lead to some being returned against their will. Nor does such a rapid response allow time to instigate the processes needed to ensure a viable, durable return. Even if the conditions for return are deemed to be in place, such a process should not be framed as a durable solution but rather a temporary measure until such time as clear processes are established to tackle unresolved land issues and other related grievances. In order to be sustainable, such processes must enjoy the support of leading local and national politicians.
The alternatives to return outlined in the IASC framework are relocation and local integration. IDPs who do not have land or who are too traumatised to return seem to favour resettlement on alternative sites, but this is a complex process and cannot be considered durable unless accompanied by a resolution of the land question more broadly. In any case, resettlement may simply aggravate existing land grievances, particularly in areas such as Central and Nairobi provinces, where population density is high and land scarce. Furthermore, solely focusing on those that have been recently displaced, as is currently the case among both the government and the humanitarian community, will create resentment among long-term IDPs (including the wider landless), who have been waiting many years to be resettled and are currently living in very difficult conditions.
Relocating IDPs to so-called ‘ancestral homelands’ is of particular concern. While this may offer a temporary refuge for communities that have retained strong ties with their extended families, many host families are starting to reject the continued presence of displaced people for fear that they will make claims on their land. Resettlement in areas of ethnic kinship also sets a dangerous precedent as it implicitly supports the goals of those engaged in violence and displacement as a means of ethnically cleansing certain regions. It also fails to take into account that the concept of ‘ancestral homeland’ is often an artificial construction of the colonial state, rather than a reflection of historical rootedness (Lonsdale 2008). Ethnicity is not a static, homogenous entity, but rather a fluid concept subject to generations of intermarriage. Any efforts to return IDPs to presumed ‘homelands’ would need to determine which communities actually belong to certain areas, and how far back in history one would need to go to find this out, a process that would surely further divide Kenya's communities and could even threaten the country's cohesion.
The third possibility – integrating the displaced in the areas where they have sought refuge – depends on their characteristics and the willingness of both the displaced and host communities to accept integration. In reality, pressures on local resources are already high, and integrating IDPs in rural areas is probably not going to be feasible. In the towns and cities unemployment is a serious concern, particularly among young people, and access to land and housing is already inadequate. Despite these problems, if the political process stalls and land issues are not effectively tackled, urban migration will probably further accelerate, which means that the government and humanitarian agencies must prepare to support integration in urban areas. These efforts need to be linked with the government's wider recovery strategy, which aims to improve services in slum areas and increase employment opportunities, and must be carried out in partnership with development agencies concerned with tackling the wider problems of socio-economic insecurity in the urban peripheries where the bulk of IDPs live. Questions of land tenure also demand attention: many of the displaced squat in public buildings or other public spaces, threatening the informal property interests of the existing urban poor (Alden Wily 2009). The expertise of development agencies engaged in urban planning is increasingly needed to support measures to secure tenure for the displaced and the wider population of concern.
Any solution to displacement, whether temporary or durable, must enjoy the active participation of Kenyan civil society, particularly the faith-based organisations that have historically played an important role in supporting IDPs (Klopp 2006). These groups are important stakeholders in promoting dialogue, reconciliation and peace-building activities; and they bring important pressure to bear on the government to effectively deal with the issues outlined in the political agreement between Kibaki and Odinga. These include a commitment by the government to resolve historical grievances, including land issues. A draft Land Policy has been developed in this regard, although its final content and adoption remains a contentious issue in Parliament. Furthermore, there are questions concerning where the resources will come from for its implementation and whether the government has the political will to reverse much of the land-grabbing that has taken place in the last few decades; many of the politicians implicated are still in positions of power. Pressure from civil society will be essential in shaping and driving this agenda forward.
Conclusion
Land issues are central to the dynamics of forced displacement in Kenya, with significant implications for humanitarian and recovery interventions that aim to support durable solutions in the aftermath of the violence that followed the 2007 elections. Even before the latest crisis, grievances over land had generated over 350,000 IDPs. Displacement is thus not a new phenomenon, and portraying return as a durable solution in the absence of clear processes to resolve the underlying causes risks embedding the conditions for further violence in the future. If a durable solution is to be achieved, historical grievances must be acknowledged and effectively addressed (Klopp 2002).
Indeed, although many of these grievances have been acknowledged, it is not yet clear whether adequate processes will be put in place to address them and whether there is sufficient political will to drive this agenda forward. As a result, many local communities oppose the return of displaced people and displaced people themselves are not keen to return to contested areas. The possibility of coerced return raises clear protection concerns, particularly given the government desire to ‘resolve’ the displacement problem as rapidly as possible. The humanitarian community should be very cautious about facilitating return in the absence of adequate physical and socio-economic security. Well-informed advocacy, which incorporates land tenure expertise, is required to encourage the government to meet its obligations to ensure that the conditions for return are in place. If such processes are to represent a truly durable solution, they must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of historical grievances and the need for reconciliation processes. In the absence of such change, it is imperative that the humanitarian community monitors the fate of IDPs after their return, to ensure that their rights are protected and their needs are met, and not simply forgotten amongst the needs of the wider poor.