In conclusion, the paper takes stock of Kenya’s status 10 years since the KNDR was ratified and in the face of the recently concluded 2017 elections that have occasioned yet another political crisis. In all these instances, reference is made to achievements and challenges experienced within those processes in light of their contribution to transformation. It is at this point that the report discusses in detail, the processes utilized to address the long-standing issues as Kenya’s transformative transitional justice agenda, namely: accountability for the PEV the TJRC and institutional reforms within the judiciary and police. The report then ventures into the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) process which was the mediation effort that was utilized to end the PEV crisis by establishing a grand coalition government and an agenda to address the long-standing issues that were deemed responsible for causing the violence. In this period attempts to undertake constitutional reform and establish a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) are initiated, but ultimately fail with devastating consequences for the country as seen during the PEV.

The argument is made for transitional justice in Kenya to be defined in the transformative terms of deconstructing the colonial state that has been preserved and utilized by successive administrations since independence. Thereafter, the focus shifts to the post-2002 context when the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) as an opposition political coalition successfully ascended to power and sparked Kenya’s formal conversation on transitional justice. On post-independent governments up to 2002, the paper notes authoritarianism, ethnic bias in governance and corruption as some of the key hindrances to addressing Kenya’s colonial legacy. In reflecting on colonialism and the establishment of the Kenyan state, the report highlights the emergent legacies of impunity, land injustices, corruption, non-responsive justice systems, non-participatory governance and coercive state institutions used to further repression. However, to properly situate what the chapter identifies to be a transformative transitional justice agenda emerging from the PEV, it begins by discussing the origins of the Kenyan state and the effect of colonialism on African communities whose lives were permanently altered by the establishment of the Kenyan colony and eventually the Kenyan state. The report notes the 2007-08 Post-Election Violence (PEV) experienced in Kenya as a key moment in the country’s history since it finally brought into sharp focus, the ‘deep-seated and long-standing divisions within Kenyan society, which, if left unaddressed, threatened the very existence of Kenya as a unified country’.

This report discusses Kenya’s transitional justice experience as one of embarking on a path to transformation.

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