This report examines prevailing understandings of violence in Nairobi and how it is addressed, as well as the limitations of existing violence mitigation measures. Violence and crimes are endemic in Nairobi's poor neighbourhoods, where they enmesh with wider problems of vulnerability. Widespread poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities for a large proportion of the urban poor exacerbate their vulnerability to being victimised by non-state violent actors and sectors of the state implicated inciting and perpetrating violence and crime. The failure of the state to state to provide for basic needs in health, education and social care, as well as a lack of effective policing, has created an opening that criminal organisations and ganga have exploited. In poorer areas of Nairobi, they provide illegal connections to public utilities, mediate access to economic opportunities and operate protection rackets. In some cases, these activities have been carried out with the knowledge and sometimes active involvement of the state.