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{
"id": 963738,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/963738/?format=api",
"text_counter": 35,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Halake",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13184,
"legal_name": "Abshiro Soka Halake",
"slug": "abshiro-soka-halake"
},
"content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I keep saying this again whenever I speak about land; governments are starting to become the number one grabber of community land. County governments are supposed to hold community land in trust, but not to just go ahead and do anything they feel like doing with it, because they do not own it. They are just trustees of community land. Section 5 of The Land Act, 2012 on customary tenure and Section 5(iii) of the Community Land Act, 2016 on inclusion of customary rights is very clear. For once, as the community of Isiolo, registration is a priority for us. Our lands are slipping off our hands and this is mainly due to our continued treatment of community land as public land. Therefore, to preempt this, we, as pastoralists, have decided to double lock our land under community tittles and other legitimate land use before we can start with adjudication. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Government, both at county and national levels and communities, often claim the same land and, therefore, to declare an adjudication area is just going to pit the communities against the Government. Consequently, with the power dynamics, the communities will definitely lose. The law is very clear, even though a little open ended, and that could constitute the public land, the Land Act Section 12 and may categorize any other public land in other sections. Additionally, the National Land Commission (NLC) has been setting aside land for investment. While we are not averse to this, why is it that in northern Kenya, land set aside for development is never compensated? These double standards must stop and we say no to these kinds of conversions that follow no laws. Although then, title is wasted a lot in the community, as owners, the community makes its own rules and this is what we want; the community to be the one to tell the national Government what it wants. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to inform this House and this country that communities in Isiolo have already started registering their land and an inventory of all the community land had been submitted to the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning. However, to scuttle this process, when they have seen that we have gone very far, this Legal Notice No.150, which I should actually call ‘illegal notice,’ was put there to scuttle the process of community land registration. This is wrong and we, as community leaders in Isiolo, are going to stand up for the rights of communities. If these lands are adjudicated before demarcation of what is community, public and private, then the community will be disinherited. This is what we do not want to see. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the legal protection of community land prior to registration is not being honored by state actors. Legal protection is included constitutionally in Articles 40, 61 and 63; in Section 5 of the Land Act and in Sections 3(iv)(iii) of the Community Land Act 2016. The Community Land Act enables the Government to exclude specified parts of the properties. This is exactly what is happening. Within the land adjudication, there is no demarcation of what acreage is going to be adjudicated. Therefore, we could see a situation where all the range lands that have historically belonged to the communities being taken away from them. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, other laws that interfere with the pastoral land tenure and resource rights were already starting to challenge them and, therefore, it is not in"
}