TITLE:
Pokot-Turkana Conflict in Kenya: Interrogating Its Causes and Persistence
AUTHORS:
Patrick R. Devine, Peter Wanyande
KEYWORDS:
Conflict, Underlying Causes, Ineffective Approaches, Persistence
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.8,
August
12,
2026
ABSTRACT: The 43 Kenyan ethnic communities have coexisted at various times in peace and conflict throughout the six-decade long period since the founding of the nation. Conflicts typically arise from differences in the political parties or candidates that the protagonist communities support, tendencies for territorial expansion, and competition for natural resources. While the intervention of the State and some non-state actors, including the Catholic Church, has led to the settlement or resolution of some of these conflicts, many others, especially between pastoralist communities remain, outstanding and unresolved. The conflict between the Turkana and the Pokot ethnic communities is among such unresolved problems. This paper revisits the Turkana-Pokot relations in an attempt to establish the salient variables that account for inability of the combined government and NGO intervention to resolve the persisting conflict between the two communities. The Catholic Church has a pervasive presence throughout the Pokot-Turkana conflict environment and is involved in education, medical care and justice-peace activities, among other spheres. This paper is based on the PhD study by Patrick Devine that examined the interface between political, economic, environmental, social and cultural forces and factors that underpin Pokot-Turkana conflict’s underlying causes and persistence. Data for the study were obtained from field research based on the three hypotheses, namely, that the conflict persists because: 1) the underlying causes have not been addressed: 2) of ineffective approaches by the State in managing the conflict: 3) of ineffective activities by the Catholic Church in managing the conflict (Devine, 2024: p. 81).