Challenges to water access are characterized by ineffective water institutions in Upper Ewaso Ng’iro North River basin. The inability of policies to create trust and equity for sustainable water access is critical despite institutional reforms undertaken over the years. The impact of scarcity and limitations noted are more pronounced in upstream downstream landscape breeding a sense of dissatisfaction and perception of inequality among water users and stakeholders. Study adopted a mixed methods with data collection tools used were; desktop analysis, field visits and discussions, structured questionnaires, Key Informant Interviews and Focus Group Discussions. Interviews with 384 randomly selected households were conducted and data analyzed using descriptive statistics. Theory of Access informed the study. The findings showed that rivers and boreholes are the main water sources in the sub-basin. Consequences of the unsatisfactory state of water access attributed to weak water governance policies and water management institutions. Lack of trust among water users remains latent easily triggered by scarcity and political-economic and social disruptions during severe droughts. The study’s recommendations are the development of effective communication mechanisms to share information, adherence to regulations, and government to implement current and past reforms to mitigate constraints to water access.

Water conflicts have huge impacts on livelihoods and without proper redress, have capacity to stall economic development of a community. This paper therefore explicates the impacts of unresolved water related conflicts in Ewaso Ng’iro North River sub-basin in Kenya and their persistence despite past major institutional and policy reforms in the water sector. Repetitive unresolved water conflicts curtail the prosperity of the communities on river basins. Study  objective was to assess continued unresolved conflicts albeit the numerous and robust water reforms. Mixed methods research design was adopted to capture both primary and secondary data. Game Theory supported the study explicating how water users both upstream and downstream are players whose payoffs if not transparent cause conflicts. Sampling formula was utilized to derive a sample size of 384 respondents and employed simple random sampling. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaires, Key Informant interviews, Focused Group Discussions and Transect walks. Results show that water users aware of regulations in place governing water on river basins however had weak compliance. The legal and policy reforms need to be up scaled to enhance capacity to resolve conflicts by WRUAs and WRA. Compliance to regulations governing water to be enforced by mandated institutions to curb the repetitiveness of unresolved water conflicts. Keywords: Ewaso Ng’iro, Institutional reforms, Water Resources, Water Users, Unresolved Conflicts.