The Kenya UK Defence Cooperation Agreement, Ahead of Renewal

Bottom line

Kenya and the United Kingdom are expected to renegotiate the Defence Cooperation Agreement that governs the British Army Training Unit Kenya during 2026. The agreement is the legal foundation for a permanent British military presence near Nanyuki, and the question it has never settled is jurisdiction: when a British soldier commits a serious crime on Kenyan soil, whose court tries the case. Under the operative text, as read by legal analysts and by Kenya's own parliamentary committee, primary jurisdiction over deaths caused in the course of official duty rests with the United Kingdom, and Kenya's attempt to place murder under its own courts has not been clearly accepted. The renewal reopens that question, against a contested ratification record, a two year parliamentary inquiry alleging a pattern of harm, and the first extradition fight over a British soldier accused of killing a Kenyan. What to watch is narrow and concrete: whether the new text puts serious crimes under Kenyan jurisdiction, and whether the in force status of the agreement is finally placed beyond doubt.

The instrument and the moment

The British Army Training Unit Kenya, known as BATUK and based in the Nanyuki and Laikipia area, is the British Army's largest standing presence in Africa. Under the current framework the two armies run several joint exercises each year, and the United Kingdom trains well over a thousand Kenyan personnel annually, with cooperation centred on countering Al Shabaab and building Kenyan military capacity. The instrument that authorises all of this is the Defence Cooperation Agreement, the DCA.

The relationship is old. The first defence agreement between the two states was concluded in June 1964, six months after independence. The most recent full agreement was signed on 27 July 2021 during President Kenyatta's visit to the United Kingdom, replacing a 2015 agreement that expired on 6 October 2021. The 2021 agreement runs for five years, which places its renegotiation in 2026, and reporting indicates the two governments expect to reopen it in the course of this year.

The moment carries unusual public pressure. In June 2026, ahead of the talks, the family of Agnes Wanjiru and community members in Nanyuki held a public meeting demanding that justice and compensation come before any new pact. Their position is that a renewal which passes over the harms attributed to British troops is not one they will accept.

The constitutional and treaty backdrop

Under Article 2(6) of the Constitution of Kenya 2010, any treaty ratified by Kenya forms part of Kenyan law, and the Treaty Making and Ratification Act of 2012 sets out how the National Assembly approves such agreements. Article 118 requires public participation in the work of Parliament, a provision lawmakers have recently begun applying to defence treaties.

The status of the current agreement is contested, and the contest matters. The 2021 DCA was submitted to the National Assembly for ratification on 6 September 2021, but was not concluded before the term of the 12th Parliament ended. It was resubmitted on 22 November 2022. In April 2023 the National Assembly approved it, but with a reservation: it recommended amending the jurisdiction provision to add murder to the offences over which Kenya holds primary jurisdiction. Because that reservation functioned as an amendment, and an amendment requires the consent of both parties, the picture splits. One published legal reading holds that, since the United Kingdom had already approved the agreement without amendment, it entered into force in 2023 in its original form, without the murder reservation. Kenya's own Departmental Committee on Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations took a different view in late 2025, describing the agreement as in limbo and urging immediate ratification, on the basis that BATUK has been operating without settled legal backing. Both readings sit in the record. Neither resolves in Kenya's favour on the substance.

The question the agreement has never settled

The heart of the matter is criminal jurisdiction. According to legal analysis of the agreement, deaths caused by a British soldier in the course of official duty fall under the primary jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, which need only give sympathetic consideration to a Kenyan request to waive it. Murder does not appear among the offences placed under Kenyan primary jurisdiction in the operative text, and Kenya's proposed reservation to add it was not clearly accepted by the United Kingdom. The practical effect, as Kenyan legislators have noted, is that grave crimes can be classified as arising in the course of duty and kept outside Kenyan courts.

The Wanjiru case is the live test of that arrangement. Agnes Wanjiru, a 21 year old hairdresser and mother, was last seen at a hotel in Nanyuki frequented by British soldiers in 2012, and her body was found weeks later in a septic tank nearby. A Kenyan inquest concluded she had been unlawfully killed by one or two British soldiers. In September 2025 the High Court of Kenya issued an arrest warrant for a former British soldier, Robert James Purkiss, and in November 2025 he was arrested in the United Kingdom and began contesting extradition, with his legal costs funded by the Ministry of Defence. If he is sent to Kenya, he would be the first British soldier tried there for the killing of a civilian. The case is before a United Kingdom court and its outcome is not settled.

A domestic counterweight has emerged alongside it. In a 2022 case arising from the Lolldaiga Hills fire, a Kenyan court held that BATUK could not claim blanket sovereign immunity for harm caused on Kenyan soil. That ruling, and the Purkiss warrant, show Kenyan courts beginning to assert a jurisdiction the treaty text has tended to foreclose.

The accountability record Parliament has compiled

In November 2025, after a two year inquiry, the National Assembly's Departmental Committee on Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations published a report on the conduct of BATUK. It set out what it described as a pattern of serious misconduct: allegations of sexual abuse including rape, injuries and deaths linked to unexploded ordnance left after training, and environmental harm from waste and hazardous materials. It also raised the position of children fathered by British soldiers and then left without support. A separate ITV investigation reported 35 suspected incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse involving soldiers, nine of them after a 2022 ban, and Kenyan rights groups have recorded more than a thousand allegations of sexual offences by British soldiers since the 1960s, none of which has produced a conviction in a Kenyan court.

The committee's recommendations point directly at the renewal. They include placing crimes committed by BATUK personnel under the jurisdiction of Kenyan courts, introducing a code of conduct for foreign troops through an amendment to the Kenya Defence Forces Act, adding environmental safeguards and civilian oversight, and creating accountability for children fathered by soldiers. The renewal will be judged, in large part, on how many of these move from recommendation into binding text.

This is happening in a Parliament that has just changed how it handles such agreements. In April 2026 lawmakers ratified five separate Defence Cooperation Agreements, with France, China, Ethiopia, the Czech Republic, and Zimbabwe, and did so with explicit reservations on criminal jurisdiction and the environment, after the first public participation process applied to defence treaties. The United Kingdom renewal arrives in a chamber that has signalled it will no longer pass defence pacts through unexamined.

The open questions

The power reading

The asymmetry sits in the structure, not the rhetoric. The sending state retains primary jurisdiction over its own troops, and the host state's courts are held at arm's length by the treaty text even for the gravest crimes. The United Kingdom affirms its commitment to justice in the Wanjiru case while funding the accused soldier's resistance to extradition, two positions that can coexist legally and still leave the family where it began. Kenya's leverage, however, is real and rising. It hosts the only large British training estate on the continent, the renewal is a negotiation it can attach conditions to, and its own courts have started asserting jurisdiction independent of the treaty, in the Lolldaiga ruling and the Purkiss warrant. The 2026 renegotiation is the point at which that leverage is either written into the text or deferred for another five years.

What to watch

• Whether the renegotiated agreement places murder and other serious crimes under Kenyan primary jurisdiction, and removes the course of official duty carve out.
• Publication of a clear ratification record that settles whether the agreement is in force, and on what terms.
• The Westminster court's decision on the extradition of Robert James Purkiss, and whether a British soldier is tried in a Kenyan court for the first time.
• Whether the code of conduct, civilian oversight, and environmental safeguards recommended in November 2025 appear in binding text rather than as commitments.
• Whether Parliament subjects the renewal to public participation under Article 118, as it did with the five agreements ratified in April 2026.

Sources

1. Kenya presses for BATUK reforms ahead of 2026 defence review, allAfrica, February 2026.
2. Kenya and UK sign Defence Cooperation Agreement to tackle shared threats across East Africa, GOV.UK, 28 July 2021.
3. UK and Kenya sign new Defence Cooperation Agreement to tackle shared threat from Al Shabaab, GOV.UK, 28 July 2021.
4. Owiso Owiso, Kenya UK Defence Pact, Six Decades of Compromised Sovereignty, The Elephant, 9 February 2026.
5. Why MPs want Kenya, UK Defence Cooperation Agreement ratified, Daily Nation, 10 December 2025.
6. MPs approve defence pacts with France, China, Ethiopia, Czech Republic and Zimbabwe, Capital FM, 22 April 2026.
7. Report on the Consideration of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Kenya and the Government of the United Kingdom on Defence Cooperation, National Assembly of Kenya, April 2023.
8. Agnes Wanjiru murder, family urges Kenya and UK to prioritise justice before BATUK agreement renewal, Tuko, June 2026.
9. Charting the investigation into Agnes Wanjiru's death as a former soldier faces extradition to Kenya, BFBS Forces News, November 2025.
10. Agnes Wanjiru, what her family's fight for justice reveals about the legacy of colonialism, Lacuna, June 2026.
11. Constitution of Kenya 2010, Articles 2(6) and 118; Treaty Making and Ratification Act, 2012, Laws of Kenya.

Corrections

None to date.