NAIROBI, Kenya — The United Nations is expanding its hub here in Kenya’s capital with a nearly $340 million construction project, even as UN human rights experts warn that the country is sliding into a pattern of repression.
The UN Office at Nairobi (UNON), the Secretariat’s largest investment in Africa and the global South beyond peacekeeping, has added new office blocks and is upgrading its conference centers to position Nairobi as an international hub. Now, major UN entities, including Unicef, the UN Population Fund and UN Women, have begun shifting some back-office functions to Nairobi as part of a systemwide reform agenda started earlier this year. More than 6,000 UN personnel are currently based in Kenya, 5,000 of them within the UNON compound.
At the same time, as the UN grows its footprint and relocates numerous entities to Nairobi, several UN human rights experts, known as special rapporteurs, and other specialists have accused Kenyan authorities, as described in a joint communiqué issued last summer, of carrying out a “pattern of criminalization and harassment” through arrests, deportations and restrictions on media coverage of June 2025 protests that left at least 16 people dead.
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, told PassBlue in an interview that the repressions suggest a coordinated state effort. She was the lead author of the August complaint by numerous experts alleging patterns of repression against civil society. The actions, she said, show “that various organs of the state have been intentionally mobilized to chill the environment for human rights defense in the country.”
Lawlor added that “a single strategy alone, for instance, criminalization, would not be effective enough” against Kenya’s vibrant civil society and strong constitutional protections. “This multitude of tactics is necessary,” she said, to try to stifle defenders in such a resilient environment.
Additionally, Lawlor said she was convinced that the acts of repression reflect disturbing trends since 2020, including the abduction of a Rwandan activist from Nairobi in 2023 and the unresolved murder of a woman environmentalist in 2021, among other cases. Lawlor said that a national policy to protect human rights defenders in Kenya has stalled since 2017, suggesting what she called a “clear lack of political will to make the protection of human rights defenders a reality.” The Kenyan government has replied only twice to the 10 communications Lawlor has led or has joined since she took up the UN mandate in 2020, she said.
Yet, even as these allegations mount, the UN as an institution is deepening its physical and administrative ties to Nairobi. The UN hub’s expansion is significant, involving two construction projects approved in 2023, long before UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced in March 2025 his reform strategy for streamlining the organization systemwide, including personnel cuts up to 20 percent, prompted by a continuing liquidity crisis and aid cuts by the United States and Europe to UN entities.
A $265.7 million upgrade of UNON’s conference facilities is expected to begin in 2026 and finish in 2030. A separate expansion of offices, which account for the rest of the nearly $340 million package, is done.
Kenya’s reportedly lower operating costs than those in New York City, its strategic time zone — allowing overlap with Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa — and its temperate climate make the country an attractive base for administrative and back-office services. The UN says relocating these functions from UN headquarters in the US is expected to save millions of dollars as part of its broader reform initiative to slim down the organization.
Kenya’s government has courted the UN’s growing presence. Ambassador Ababu Namwamba, Kenya’s permanent representative to the UNON and the UN Environment Program — one of the original agencies, with UN Habitat, to be based at the hub — recently described the Gigiri compound as “the largest physical UN campus in the world.” It hosts 40 entities and over 70 offices, according to the UN.
Kenya donated 100 acres in 1972 for the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and 40 more in 1975 for UN Habitat. Both entities are the only UN agencies headquartered in the global South. The 140-acre compound is in a diplomatic enclave about seven miles from the city center, adjacent to the US and Canadian embassies, and near the Karura Forest. UNON includes numerous office blocks, large green spaces and the conference facilities, which accommodate global meetings on environment and urban development. (The UN Environment Assembly is holding a conference this week at the hub.)
In a social media post, Namwamba said that Kenya had studied the benefits and services offered by other major UN host cities like New York City, Geneva and Vienna to improve diplomatic privileges and working conditions in Nairobi. “Kenya welcomes more of the UN footprint in Nairobi,” he wrote on Nov. 6.
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for Guterres, said in an email to PassBlue: “The expansion reflects growing demand for modern, efficient and sustainable workspace for UN entities operating from Nairobi.” When asked how the UN justifies the nearly $340 million investment amid large systemwide budget cuts (including, recently, no longer supplying paper towels in UN headquarters restrooms, saving $100,000 annually, it says), Haq said the projects reflect long-term planning rather than recent spending decisions. “Discussions for these two particular projects began over 15 years ago,” he said.
He said the expansions included safety upgrades, noting that the 1970s structures being replaced were “unsafe for continued use, did not meet seismic codes and were not accessible to persons with disabilities.” The larger conference project, he added, was a strategic imperative for the UN’s presence in the developing world.
The conference facilities are in “dire” shape, he noted.
Beyond the physical upgrades, Haq emphasized that the UN also maintains “a strong and cordial working relationship with the Government of Kenya, grounded in mutual respect,” noting that the Nairobi base “continues to engage with authorities on a variety of issues, including those raised by the Special Rapporteurs.” Haq said the Kenyan government has accepted a fully fledged UN high commissioner for human rights office at the UNON hub, covering the entire country.
Lawlor told PassBlue that her mandate, which is unpaid and independent of the UN Secretariat, operates separately from the high commissioner’s office, which must take a more constrained approach to its work, she said. She also acknowledged the UN’s delicate balancing act operating in host countries, “treading a line between denouncing human rights abuses and developing capacities and protection in the country.”
Kenya’s government addressed some of the human rights allegations from the UN specialists in October 2025 , including providing legal justifications for arrests and deportations of specific activists and noting that investigations into protest-related deaths were underway. However, Lawlor said the information provided by the government was limited. It disputed claims that authorities had systematically targeted defenders and defended the arrests as lawful enforcement actions.
Nevertheless, Lawlor said she hoped the correspondence with the government could provide a basis for “further good faith engagement with the Kenyan government on the right to defend human rights in the country.”
Namwamba, the Kenyan envoy to UNON, did not respond to a request for comment.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the UN in Nairobi?
Related Posts
Maurice Oniang’o is a Kenyan journalist with over seven years of experience covering East Africa for outlets like The Guardian, National Geographic, The Continent, and NowThis. He recently earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is currently based in New York City.
![[Re]Group - A Playbook for Turbulent Times -Subscribe Now](https://passblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/regroup-v2_unf2026_square_600.500@2x.webp)
