Rex Masai left home on the morning of 20 June 2024 carrying a water bottle, a Kenyan flag, and the conviction that young people had a right to be heard. The 29-year-old had joined nationwide demonstrations against the Finance Bill, protests fuelled by anger over rising living costs, corruption and a political class many young Kenyans felt no longer represented them. By evening, the young man was dead, struck by a live bullet, as crowds dispersed in Nairobi’s central business district.
His mother, Gillian Munyao, remembers him as the eldest son who dreamed of becoming an architect, but, when the family could no longer afford university tuition, he took a job at a Nairobi casino, saving to educate his younger siblings. “My daughter still cries,” Munyao says. “She tells me, ’Mum, my dream died with Rex’.”
Two years later, Munyao finds herself feeling ambivalent. The government that failed to protect her son now wants to compensate his family through Kenya’s first national reparations programme for victims of recent protest-related violence. But acknowledgement from the state, she says, cannot substitute justice. “There is no human life worth three million shillings,” she says. “First let those responsible be judged, then come and tell us about the money; the money can only wipe away tears.”
Impunity of the security forces
So far as the Treasury begins disbursing payments, the Independent policing oversight authority (IPOA) and the Office of the director of public prosecutions have secured zero convictions in connection with the protest-related deaths from 2024.
In fact, according to human rights organizations, Kenyan authorities have not investigated or prosecuted security forces, in most cases of excessive and lethal force during protests from 2023 to 2025. A joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Kenya found that at least 31 people were killed during the 2023 cost-of-living protests. In 2024, the IPOA said it had registered 60 killings, while 26 people abducted by the police are still missing. And according to Amnesty international Kenya, in June and July 2025, 65 deaths and 341 injuries were recorded by the IPOA. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights separately recorded 57 deaths and at least 531 injuries in the same period.
Arrests also reached alarming levels: the IPOA recorded 760 arrests in July 2025, the peak single-day arrest figure for 2025. In 2026, the anti-fuel-hike protests on 18 May produced the highest single-day arrest count recorded so far, with 1058 arrests reported. A further 355 arrests were reported on 25 June 2026.
How Kenya’s reparations programme works
Kenya has set up a 2 billion Kenyan shillings (KSh) fund (roughly €13 million): it is the first time the government has set aside money to compensate victims of police brutality during recent political unrests. The fund is meant to cover four periods of violence: the 2017 post-election protests, the 2022 post-election period, the 2023 Maandamano demonstrations, and the youth-led protests of 2024–25.
Irũngũ Houghton, former executive director of Amnesty International Kenya, traces the programme’s origins to the National dialogue committee established after the disputed 2022 presidential election. “The opposition, led by its party leader, Raila Odinga, organised a series of nationwide protests in 2023 that ended in violent clashes with police; this prompted President William Ruto and Odinga to agree to a political truce,” Houghton says. “The National dialogue committee was established to help mediate a political settlement, and its recommendations included reparations and compensation for victims of human rights violations and police brutality during public protests.”
The government says 1,101 verified victims out of 1,815 total claims reviewed will benefit, including families of those killed, survivors of permanent or minor injuries, victims of aggravated sexual violence, and individuals who suffered property destruction. However, 35 verified families of the disappeared and 135 torture survivors remain excluded from initial payouts, pending stricter verification.
Re-examination and re-traumatisation for victims
“Subjecting families of the disappeared and torture survivors to a secondary state scrutiny is an unlawful, discriminatory barrier that inflicts fresh trauma on families,” says Abner Collins Mango, lead counsel for the Coalition of victims and survivors against state violence. He argues that the government-appointed task force has no legal power to alter or disregard the reparations framework established by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
As for the payouts, they vary by category. Families of those killed are expected to receive KSh 3 million (€20,312) each: it’s this figure Munyao mentions when rejecting the idea that a payout can settle her son’s death. Survivors of torture, detention, and permanent injury fall into separate, lower bands.
Houghton calls the programme a meaningful step, noting that victims deserve recognition without having to wait years for court proceedings, but he also believes the government should not treat compensation as the end of justice. Reparations, he argues, address the aftermath suffered by victims, the loss, injury, and trauma, while accountability addresses the crime itself by identifying and punishing those responsible. “If a state pays financial compensation without punishing the individuals responsible, it treats human rights violations as an operational cost rather than a crime,” he says. “That allows abusive behaviour to continue unchecked.”
The unfinished legacy of the Truth commission
Kenya’s new programme has deep roots in the Truth, justice and reconciliation commission (TJRC), established in 2009 to investigate historical injustices from the country’s independence in 1963 till the 2008 post-election violence. Over four years, the commission gathered testimony from more than 40,000 victims before publishing its 2013 report, which recommended a Restorative Justice Fund covering compensation, medical care, psychosocial support, and rehabilitation. None of it was implemented.
Agatha Ndonga, a former programme director for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in Kenya and now leading this NGO’s South Sudan work, says the 2013 report became politically contentious. “It implicated prominent people, recommended prosecutions, and proposed measures such as asset recovery and the return of irregularly acquired public land,” she says. “Implementing it required political decisions that successive governments were unwilling to take.”
The TJRC’s broader vision included public apologies, community reparations, land restitution, and structural reforms addressing colonial dispossession, political marginalisation and ethnic tensions. The TJRC Act originally required the report to reach Parliament within 21 days and implementation to begin within six months. Instead, the Parliament amended the law in late 2013 to require debate first, stalling the agenda for years.
“As the head of state, President William Ruto has a constitutional duty to implement reparations for victims of state violence,” Ndonga says. Especially since the current framework is not even “holistic, or publicized. “Many victims, especially those residing in upcountry towns, remain unaware it exists, while others, who need trauma counselling or long-term psychosocial support, fall outside its scope.”
The limits of compensation
For Ruben Carranza, a senior expert on reparative justice at the ICTJ, one of the programme’s limitations is that it “does not respond to the actual demands of those who protested”. “It only responds to the physical harm caused by the state, but not to the root cause of why the harm was inflicted,” he says.
The 2024 Finance Bill protests were about economic policy worsening already difficult living conditions. The 2017 violence reflected political division and marginalisation. Neither cause is addressed through financial compensation alone.
Carranza argues that compensation, on its own, risks shifting attention away from the police as an institution and the officers responsible. The International Criminal Court (ICC) proceedings arising from the 2007–2008 post-election violence, he argues, reflected the inability of Kenya’s domestic justice system to address political violence.
“The ICC case did not lead to an acquittal or a finding that those charged were not responsible; it simply ended without a conclusion,” he says. “Reparations such as the policy adopted recently should not be a means to entrench that impunity further.”
For Carranza, Kenya has fallen into repeated cycles of abuse because accountability never arrives. “No one seems to be accountable in Kenya for committing human rights violations; that’s why they keep happening.”
The concerns are not limited to recent protests. An Police Accountability Baseline Report by the International Justice Mission Kenya reveals that 43percentof Kenyans experienced police abuse of power, with urban male youth in the informal sector targeted for extortion and wrongful detentions.
Carranza also worries about which victims this moment renders visible. While protest and election violence draw media coverage and policy attention, state abuses during counter-terrorism operations near the Somali border, or extrajudicial actions in Nairobi’s informal settlements, go largely unrecorded. “A narrow programme risks quietly erasing victims the country has already failed once,” he warns.
Still no apology from the state
Rex Masai’s mother is still waiting for an apology from the state. “No one from the government has ever come to us,” she says. “No one has sat down with us to explain what happened or even to say ‘We are sorry for the loss of your child’.”
Her son’s death has changed the family’s life. “My remaining son carries the frustration of losing his brother and attends demonstrations whenever they are held,” Munyao says. “I fear the worst might happen again.” She adds that she and her husband, Chrispin, have tried to persuade him to stay away, but he thinks it is the only way to confront the pain he carries. “I hope a well-wisher might grant him a scholarship to continue his studies abroad, partly so I can stop fearing that another protest could take another child from me,” Munyao says.
New election cycle in 2027
In 2027, Kenya will hold another election cycle. Although the Kenyan Constitution protects the freedom to peacefully assemble and demonstrate, the recent years have been characterised by numerous accusations of excessive police force, arbitrary arrests, and enforced disappearances. During the 2017 post-election crackdown, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights documented 94 deaths, 247 people with severe injuries, more than 1,000 arbitrary detentions, and 201 cases of sexual violence. In the 2024 Finance Bill protests, Amnesty International Kenya documented at least 60 deaths, more than 1,300 arbitrary arrests, 82 enforced disappearances, and 10 cases of sexual abuse. In its World Report 2026: Kenya, Human Rights Watch attributes the cycle of abuse in part to authorities’ failure to investigate and prosecute security forces, even where evidence of excessive force exists.
For families like Munyao, the programme may finally acknowledge what happened; whether it delivers justice is a different question. Two years after her son’s death, Munyao still reflects on the conversation she wishes she could have with President Ruto: “You are a parent, I am a parent, you would never want your child to be killed and the killer walk free. Treat us the way you would want to be treated.”
