Beyond Acquisition and Transfer: Nozick’s Rectification Principle as a Remedy for Tanzania’s Resource Distribution Injustices in North Mara, Tanzania.

  ABSTRACT: The Kurya people of Tanzania, particularly in the Mara Region, have long suffered from systematic injustices in land and resource distribution. These injustices are rooted in colonial dispossession, post-independence policies, and weak legal protections for customary land ownership. The failure of existing laws and policies to protect customary ownership has allowed land grabbing, forced evictions, and economic exclusion to persist, leaving the Kurya people with diminishing access to their ancestral resources. This paper applies Robert Nozick’s Entitlement Theory as a framework for addressingg these historical injustices. Nozick’s libertarian approach emphasizes justice in acquisition and voluntary exchange. He also acknowledges that if past acquisitions were unjust, corrective measures are necessary to restore rightful ownership. The paper argues that the Tanzanian government must undertake a comprehensive historical review of land acquisitions and transfers to rectify injustices. It recommends a historical review of injustice through rectification to recognize customary land tenure, restitutionon of wrongfully acquired land to ensuring that local populations benefit from their resources.

KEYWORDS: Entitlement Theory, justice, North Mara, Robert Nozick.