Prominent personalities may lose large tracts of land and plots if President Kibaki acts on a report that is currently being compiled by the Commission of Inquiry into illegally allocated land. In an exclusive interview with the East African Standard, the chairman, Mr Paul Nderitu Ndungu, said among those who may surrender land include former Cabinet ministers, Provincial Commissioners, District Commissioners, Parastatal chiefs, church leaders, military and police bosses and businessman.

A couple of iron sheets cover the tiny shelter where Virginia Njeri and her family live in the heart of Deep Sea. Before Father Franco Cellana showed up in this Nairobi slum four years ago, she had no idea who owned the land. She only knew she had to pay Sh3,000 to the chief before she could put up her structure. Fr Cellana, the priest-in-charge at Consolata Shrine, organised a team of people to educate Virginia and her neighbours on their civil rights. The first job was to find out the landlord's name.

Health Action International (HAI) Africa is a growing informal network of consumers, NGOs, health care providers, academics and individuals in more than 20 countries promoting increased access to essential medicines, the essential medicines concept and the rational use of both modern and traditional medicines. HAI is looking for experienced individuals to occupy the above positions in its office in Nairobi, Kenya.

A company associated with former Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority boss Harun Mwau has been implicated in a multi-million-shilling tax evasion scandal. The scandal was unearthed when a container whose contents had been falsely declared was intercepted at the Mombasa port by officials from the Kenya Revenue Authority and the Weights and Measures Department.

A meeting of church leaders in Kenya has been called to discuss how they can remove a clause in the draft constitution that recognises Muslim courts - also referred to as Kadhi's courts. Church leaders say Islam is the only faith explicitly mentioned in the draft, and that the provision for Muslim courts gives Islam precedence over other religions.

When the World Social Forum took place in India during January, Kenyan activists who attended the event pledged to highlight their country's housing crisis. This issue has hit the headlines again now, with the planned demolition of buildings in one of Nairobi's poorest areas. Since last December, authorities have been pulling down structures built along railway and power lines, on the grounds that this property was illegally allocated for development. Some of the first structures to go were mansions worth millions of Kenyan shillings - many of them owned by key members of the government under former President Daniel arap Moi.

Two politicians have so far been killed, a woman got shot in the stomach and hundreds of people were displaced from a site at an Ogiek ancestral forest in Western Kenya along the Uganda Border. The attackers are said to be from the Pok (Bok) ethnic group of the Sabaot tribe, which belongs to the Kalenjin group of nilotic tribes and who live also across the border in Uganda, from where it is said the assault weapons used in the attack derive.

Kenya's efforts to ensure it has more healthy citizens shows no sign of improvement except for a reduction in the HIV/Aids prevalence, a survey report indicates. Consequently, the Kenya Family Service Provision Survey, launched in Nairobi this week, recommends a radical review of priorities and approaches in addressing the country's health issues. However, the report says there are pockets of past success stories, including a substantial increase in contraceptive use and a considerable success in the overall reduction of family sizes.

Following various seminars conducted by NGOs to mark the 8 March International Women's Day, 200 female circumcisers from Kenya's Rift Valley Province have abandoned their tools of trade and vowed to fight the deeply rooted custom. Habil Oloo, a programme officer at the Kenya National Focal Point for FGM (female genital mutilation), which coordinates nationwide activities against the practice, said the development was the fruit of years of struggle by Kenyan NGOs against entrenched traditional attitudes among communities.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya has made impressive gains in improving access to education, driven by substantial investments in education by the government. However, since the mid to late eighties there has been a decline in school enrolment rates, and a reversal of the gains achieved in previous decades. This paper from the Global Development Network explores the reasons for this decline in primary school enrolment. The paper discusses Kenya's education system and traces recent trends in enrolment rates.

Elderly people in three North-Rift districts have launched an environmental conservation programme. Through the support from the Kenya Elderly People Organisation (Kepo) and the Eldoret-based Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, the elderly are expected to keep themselves busy by being involved in environmental conservation matters. "The elderly people from Uasin Gishu, North Nandi and South Nandi districts have formed the Mwangaza Elders Community based organisation to achieve this goal," said Mr David Koros, an official from the rights group.

A new initiative to restore the Nairobi Dam and its waters back to health has been launched. The project, called the Nairobi Dam Trust Initiative, aims to raise up to $600,000 to clean up the reservoir so that it can be again an important source of clean and healthy drinking water as well as a magnet for water sports enthusiasts, fishermen, picnickers and bountiful bird life.

The Coordination Office and Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Office of the Habitat International Coalition's Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC-HLRN) and the International Secretariat of the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT) would like to express their deep concern about the state of housing rights in Kenya. The Government's invitation of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing to conduct a mission on the situation of housing rights in the country, the support of its different ministries during the mission, its acceptance of the human-rights approach in its policies, and its creation of new laws and new bodies to promote and implement respect of human rights are promising. Yet, we want to ensure that your Government will take seriously into account all following issues, all of which the Special Rapporteur has mentioned in his preliminary observations on 21 February 2004.

Kenya urged African countries last Thursday to stick by a 15-year global ban on the ivory trade, which it says has saved the elephant population across the continent from further decimation. The ivory trade was prohibited worldwide in 1989 after the African elephant population halved to 600,000 in just over a decade. "Even a limited reopening of the trade would signal to the consumer that it was, once again, acceptable to buy, sell, and wear ivory and would stimulate global demand and raise the prices," said Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori.

Tycoon Kamlesh Pattni has denied videotaping prominent Kenyans as he bribed them. The denial, almost two weeks after the raids that police informants said yielded evidence of corruption, was issued by Pattni's lawyer Bernard Kalove. In the statement, Kalove accused "the press, both print and electronic, mainstream and gutter", of having gone on a "rumour generation and rumour mongering spree" intended to suggest that "our client was captured 'bribing', or 'greasing the palms of' or 'entertaining' certain prominent personalities".

A Kenyan MP has lost his bid to get a court order compelling the government to release video tapes, which allegedly show former top officials being bribed. The High Court ruled that MP Koigi wa Wamwere has no legal capacity to sue the government since he has not stated his interests in the matter. The tapes were seized last week from the home of Kamlesh Pattni, the man at the heart of the Goldenberg affair.

Inadequate policies on land use are to blame for the widespread environmental degradation in Africa, a Cabinet minister has said. Dr Newton Kulundu, of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife, said uncontrolled economic activities and unplanned infrastructure development have continued unabated resulting in the degradation of nature.

Human rights advocates are calling on the Kenyan government to stop demolishing shantytowns in the capital until it has worked out a plan to relocate the inhabitants. This was the week the Kenyan government was to bulldoze homes and businesses in the poorest sections of Nairobi. But President Mwai Kibaki intervened in the last minute and stopped the demolition until the government finds a way to relocate the residents.

The Government has been urged to take a more proactive approach to the development of Information Technology (IT) in order to improve the business environment. Sector players described information and communication technology (ICT) as vital to the growth of any economy and warned that Kenya risked being left behind by its neighbours should the government fail to act promptly.

Civil servants in Kenya have threatened to go on their first-ever strike at the end of March if government fails to award them a 600 percent pay rise. The Kenya Civil Servants Union, which has been in existence for a year, says it has been negotiating with government on behalf of about 250,000 workers - but that little progress has been made concerning wage increases.