Resettlement of victims of forced evictions and proprietory rights in land

Abstract

Kenya’s urban settlement is currently riddled with the challenge of informal settlements. The informal settlers in most cases have no ownership over the land they occupy. This denies the informal settlers other rights that are intrinsically connected with the land including the right to housing, to food, to water and to shelter. Problems arise when these informal settlements are to be demolished as the settlers who have lived in an area for long periods of times usually have no other place to move to. Kenyan courts have relied on Article 43 of the Kenyan 2010 Constitution to hold that forced evictions must culminate in the relocation and the resettlement of the victims The Court of Appeal in the case Kenya Airports Authority v Mitu Bell 2016, however, noted that Article 43 cannot be used to confer prescriptive rights in the land of another person. As such a lacuna exists as to how resettlement is to be done without granting of prescriptive rights in land. This study thus seeks to give practical solutions that ensure that the victims are relocated, and at the same time are not given prescriptive rights in land