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HUMAN RIGHTS: Festive season a nightmare for Kenya’s Displaced

Miriam Gathigah

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 23 2010 (IPS) - The Christmas season comes with joy and merrymaking in Kenya, where preparations for the festivities are underway as people crowd the street to shop for clothes and gifts. But even as the cheer spreads all around, the situation is different for the thousands of internally displaced Kenyans (IDP’s) still living in various camps.

Charles Mati is one of the thousands that are still without a home.” People have moved on with their lives but our world does not move, we no longer plan for the future, only taking each day as it comes.

Some children were born in these camps and they are already crawling and making baby talk .We keep hoping that the government will look into our situation, but so far all we have are empty promises,” explains Mati, an IDP from the Rift Valley region.

During yet another Christmas, people like Mati have no new cloths clothes or gifts to open. Even more unfortunate is the fact that they may not enjoy a proper meal unless well-wishers step in.

It is what their lives have been reduced to -hoping every day that a fellow human being will find it in their heart and respond to their needs. Nothing is guaranteed, not even during Christmas when food is usually in abundance in many homes.

This despite the fact that it has been three years since the country experienced unprecedented post-election violence after hotly contested presidential results of a general election.

According to various reports, including the Waki report whose commission was mandated to probe into the violence, over 1,100 people died, 3,500 injured and 600,000 forcibly evicted from their homes.

During the two months orgy of violence, scores were sexually and physically assaulted and over 100,000 properties were destroyed across the country, as Kenya moved to the brink of a civil war.

Many Kenyans have picked up the pieces and moved on with their lives, re- building what they can. But the same cannot be said of the internally displaced Kenyans who still live in camps.

Although the government had given 31st December 2010 as the deadline by which all the IDP’s should be resettled, it is unlikely that this will happen. “The government has moved the deadline from this year to next year even as the IDPs continue to face serious problems in various camps,” says Tom Kagwe, the Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).

This move comes even as the International Criminal Court intensifies its attention on Kenya and has already released six names of the people who allegedly bear the highest responsibility for what the courts term as crimes against humanity.

“These were not just crimes against innocent Kenyans. They were crimes against humanity as a whole. By breaking the cycle of impunity for massive crimes, victims and their families can have justice. And Kenyans can pave the way to peaceful elections in 2012.” explained Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo.

Although there are set laws in international laws that specifically touch on refugees, it is not the case with IDPs. However, there are a few provisions and guidelines such as the Guiding Principles on the Internally Displaced, which were compiled by Francis Deng in 1994.

These guidelines have been approved and endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), and they state that the respective government has a responsibility to prevent its peoples from being internally displaced and that when displaced, the government has to take responsibility for them.

“There is actually a National Policy on protecting and assisting displaced people drafted in 2009. The government is yet to honour its pledge to its people who brave harsh weather conditions and hunger every day,” explains Katana Mwasia, a Lawyer in Nakuru, Rift Valley region.

Although the government had already begun purchasing land on which to re- settle IDPs, and even commenced a project dubbed ‘Rudi Nyumbani’ which loosely translated means, ‘Go back home,’ nothing much has been achieved because the National Policy on ID’s is yet to be implemented.

Human rights organisations, particularly the, KNCHR, who have continuously raised concerns over the government’s failure to re-settle IDPs, blame the situation on a lack of coordination between government ministries. The ministries in question include the Ministry of Special Programmes, Land, Finance and Internal Security.

The government only recognises 19 camps with a total population of about 6,800 families and 25 transitional camps with 3,714 families. Human rights organisations say the numbers could be higher because there were another 300,000 persons who were already displaced due to political and insecurity crises between 1992 and 2007.

Even as the IDPs continue to suffer from hunger and diseases in congested and insecure camps, thousands are looking forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and soon, a new year. For people like Charles Mati, there is hope that a new day will dawn on them and soon they will be able to return to their homes.