Kenya’s national human rights commission recorded 82 abductions or enforced disappearances between June and December 2024. Many of the people reported missing after the country’s anti-tax protests later resurfaced, but some have been found dead. Dozens of young Kenyans reported being snatched from their homes or the streets by armed men.
The origins of enforced disappearances and the institutions that facilitate them in Kenya can be traced to British settler colonialism. Kidnapping and detaining political dissidents and pro-independence fighters without trial, and making them disappear, was a political tactic during Britain’s colonisation of Kenya.
It was employed effectively to control certain individuals and groups, and enhance the colonial control of land and the people.
