IMANI: Will Sh2 billion reparations promise heal the wounds of protest?

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights is racing against a 60-day deadline to build a framework that could finally acknowledge, in both word and deed, the suffering of hundreds of Kenyans injured or bereaved during the protest waves of 2017, 2024 and 2025.

For the families of those killed and for the survivors still carrying bullets in their bodies, the process that began on March 6, when President William Ruto issued a Gazette Notice directing the KNCHR to develop a compensation framework, offers something more than money.

It offers—likely for the first time—a formal state acknowledgment that wrong was done.

KNCHR chairperson Claris Ogangah put it plainly when announcing the commission's work last week. "It is not paying people for dying," she said. "It is acknowledging that there was a wrong that happened and it is a way of saying sorry to the people who suffered losses."

That apology, she confirmed, will form an explicit part of the reparations package, alongside medical and psychological support for the wounded and, critically, guarantees that such violence will not happen again.

The window for victims to come forward is painfully short. By April 3, those with claims must submit their evidence—P3 forms, medical reports, police occurrence book records, post-mortem reports—to the commission's offices in Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, Kitale, Nyahururu or Wajir.

The urgency reflects both the political momentum behind the process and the scale of the task. To its credit, the government has set aside Sh2 billion in a supplementary budget, though the KNCHR has already warned this may prove insufficient once all verified cases are counted.

Any shortfall would require a recommendation for additional funding in the 2026/27 financial budget year.

The commission is drawing on multiple sources—its own records, police files, Independent Policing Oversight Authority reports, hospital data and submissions from civil society—to build a national database of victims.

The government's initial response to the 2024 protests was defined by a ‘shoot-to-kill’ rhetoric that cost dozens of lives.  The shift toward a formal acknowledgment of state accountability, embodied in the current reparations process, represents more than political expediency.

It reflects a recognition, hard-won by the protesters themselves, that the right to peaceful dissent cannot be conditional on the government's approval.

The road to this point has been anything but straightforward. It was shaped, decisively, by a December 4, 2025, High Court judgment in Kerugoya that struck down an earlier presidential attempt to handle compensation through an executive-appointed panel.

That panel, created in August 2025 amid public outrage over police violence during the Gen Z protests against the Finance Bill, had been tasked with verifying victims and designing payouts. But civil society organisations and legal professionals challenged it, arguing it duplicated the KNCHR's constitutional mandate and risked becoming a politicised tool for dispensing patronage rather than justice.

The court agreed. It affirmed that the constitution and the KNCHR Act state the independent commission holds exclusive authority to secure redress for rights violations.

The executive panel was stripped of its powers and converted into a purely advisory body, required now to base its recommendations solely on KNCHR findings. The ruling was a quiet but profound victory for the principle of institutional independence—a reminder that even benevolent state power must operate within constitutional bounds.

Between 2023 and 2025, Ipoa handled 820 cases of alleged police misconduct during public order management. Only 35 resulted in convictions involving 49 officers—a conviction rate of just 4.3 per cent .

The culture of impunity within the National Police Service has long been the target of activists' anger, and it is that culture, as much as any individual act of brutality, that the reparations framework now seeks to address.

The KNCHR's mandate will go over and above writing cheques. Under international human rights principles, a comprehensive reparations programme includes restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.

The last of these is the most forward-looking and perhaps the most difficult. It requires institutional reforms that transform the police from a ‘force’ oriented toward regime protection into a ‘service’ genuinely protective of citizens' rights—which the 2010 constitution and National Police Service Act (2011) sought to do.

Ogangah has signalled that the commission is already working on proposals to improve the legal framework governing demonstrations, drawing on Article 37 of the constitution, which guarantees the right to assemble, demonstrate and picket peaceably.

Yet the path forward remains uncertain. The 21-day window for victims to file claims, which closes on April 3, is followed by a 60-day deadline for the KNCHR to submit its framework to the President.

As this unfolds, Civil society organisations, human rights defenders and the very institutions tasked with delivering reparations are united in a single, urgent plea: keep the politicians out.

Perhaps it is this concern that has contributed somewhat to the shower window for submission of claims.

Ogangah was firm: the commission “wants to finish before this matter is politicised", underscoring that the exercise should “ensure victims are compensated and nothing political".

For the families still waiting, closure cannot come soon enough, as Kenyans watch not just for the money, but for the apology—and for the proof, in reformed institutions and protected rights, that the state means what it says.