Right to Housing Under the Constitution of Kenya

unspoilt TO HOUSING UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF KENYA The adjust to living accommodations comprises an intricate start out in the realization of one of the most basic needs of a human being, shelter. Everyone has the right to a decent standard of living as resignd in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a memorandum that has attained the status of jus cogens due to its wide acceptance. Essential to the achievement of this standard is access to capable housing. It has been said that housing fulfills physical needs by providing security and shelter from weather and climate.It fulfills psychological needs by providing a sense of personal space and privacy. It fulfills social needs by providing a gathering area and communal space for the human family, the basic building block of society. It also fulfills scotch needs by functioning as a center for commercial production. Due to various factors including insufficient financial and inherent resources, population growth, polit ical upheavals, and rural- urban migration, a vast population of Kenyans peculiarly those living in urban areas pole up homeless or in in chance variableal settlements. Dr. P. L.O Lumumba in his speech during the World Habitat assembly in 2004 described the lengths to which quite a little unable to permit up to(predicate) housing go to provide shelter to themselves and their families. He said that some of them end up seeking refuge in, slums areas, squatting in informal settlements, of age(predicate) buses, roadside embankments, cellars, staircases, rooftops, elevator enclosures, cages, cardboard boxes, plastic sheets, aluminum and tin shelter. consort to a UN Habitat study done in 2008, 60-80 percent of residents in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu, live in informal settlements.In fact, the same study shows that while 60 percent of Nairobis populations live in informal settlements, their homes obtrude upon only 5 percent of the total land area of the city and its environs. Alt hough right to adequate shelter is a human right, this does not fee-tail that the government is obliged to provide severally of their citizens with land and an appropriate business firm to live in. This is dependent on the fairnesss and policies of each individual country. In Kenya, the dig about the justifiability of housing and some other socio-economic rights seems to be over with the waiver of the 2010 Constitution.This is because the constitution has provisions that seek to protect the provision of these rights to every citizen as will be discussed in the next part. 1. 1 The Constitution of Kenya, 2010 When Kenya gained emancipation in 1963, every Kenyan was relieved to have finally been impoverishedd from the gallus of colonialism. The independent Kenya adopted a constitution that had majorly British influence solely that seemed to suffice during those early teething age. But as years passed by, the biting reality that the country had been taken over by neo-coloniali sts acquire home.The independence constitution was not sufficient to protect the general general from the vicious acts and decisions of those in power. There was need for constitutional reform. Kenyans have colossal struggled for constitutional reform. They struggled because they suffered under an oppressive system of government. Their human rights were suppressed. The power of the state was concentrated in one person, the president. First regions and then local governments were stark of all their powers. At the center, the president dominated all institutions of the state. Cronyism substituted for politics.Merit counted for little. The law was oftentimes abused by the government and the exercise of power was unpredictable and arbitrary. The work bench had failed to protect the constitution and the rights of the people. The civil service and other executive organs lost independence. There was corruption, plundering both of the state and a unfree private sector, on a massive s cale. The new constitution wherefore had to be a document that remedies the shortcomings of the independence constitution. The drafters of the new Constitution aimed to regain the confidence of the citizens with their government.One of the salient features of the 2010 constitution is the incorporation of a strong and house-to-house schnoz of Rights. It contains a number of rights, which were missing from the independence constitution, including rights to official information, environment, economic and social rights, and rights of consumers, et cetera. The 2010 Constitution strengthens the achievement of the human rights by limiting the restrictions that may be placed on rights and by establishing a strong weapon for the put throughment of rights. It also provides for an independent commission of human rights to protect and promote rights and freedoms.Of immensity to this research are the Economic and Social rights. Article 43 provides for each persons right to a) The highest attainable standard of health b) handiness and adequate housing and to reasonable standards of sanitation. c) Freedom from hunger and to have adequate food of acceptable quality. d) Clean and safe water in adequate quantities. e) Social Security. f) Education. Amongst this list of rights is the right to housing. Forced evictions of persons living in unknowledgeable settlements and slums are a common feature of urban development.People living in these informal settlements live at the margins of society. Land is generally an expensive enthronisation in Kenya therefore only a few can afford it. Those who cannot afford it opt to rent apartments or houses or rooms from billet owners but there are some who cannot still afford this descriptor of arrangements and so set up their housing structures on any free land that they come across, regardless of whether it is private land or semipublic land set out for other purposes. This latter group of people is the ones who fall victim to fo rced evictions.Article 2(5) and (6) of the constitution general rules of international law and any treaty or convention ratified by Kenya form part of the laws of Kenya. Kenya ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and cultural Rights (ICESCR) on 3/1/1976 and consequently became bound to respect, protect and enforce the rights therein, including the right to adequate housing and the related prohibition of forced evictions. It is with this mountain of the law that victims of forced evictions that are not conducted in the manner stipulated in both domestic law and international law are able to defend their right to housing through the courts. - 2 . Article 25(1) which states in part, Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and public assistance of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care 3 . Nicholas Okemwa, Forceful Evictions and the Right to able Housing(2011)16 The Bench Bulletin 58 4 . Dr. P. L. O Lumumba, Powers of Urban politics over Settlement Control The Kenyan Case. He presented this paper during the sphere habitat forum organized by un-habitat held on the 13th seventeenth September 2004 at the Barcelona, Spain 5 .Preliminary Results of the 2009, National Population and Housing Census. 6 . Draft Eviction an Resettlement Guidelines, 2010. 7 . Commentary on the Kenyan Constitution, (Consolidation of 15 holds in the East African Standard). 8 . Article 35 9 . Article 42 10 . Article 43 11 . Article 46 12 . Article 24 is the only article that provides for the specific procedure to be followed for a right contained in the Bill of Rights to be limited. This is unlike in the independence constitution where each right was immediately followed by a claw-back clause. 13 . Article 11