By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Apr 13 2009 (IPS)

Art and fashion, environmental conservation, poverty alleviation and fair trade come together at UniqEco’s Marula Studios in an upscale suburb of Nairobi. A visit to its workshop and display centre is a delight to the eyes as well as an occasion to learn about the problem of marine pollution and its eco-friendly, community-based and business-savvy solutions.

UniquEco transforms trash. Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

Every piece in this shop is made from beach waste, mainly plastic flip-flops, collected by members of coastal communities in Lamu in Kenya’s poverty-stricken northeast.

Since its inception in 2005 this recycling company has reused nearly 60,000 kg, or 175,000 flip-flops, as raw material for a range of awareness-raising products and works of art. About 200 waste collectors, most of them women, comb the beaches inundated by flotsam thrown out by the ocean.

UniqEco buys this waste and employs a team of two dozens artisans to turn it into marketable consumer goods.

Kenyan environmentalist Julie Church founded this company in partnership with local community worker Tahreni Bwanaali. For six years, she ran a marine conservation and development programme for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Kenya Wildlife Service in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve.

‘‘One of the eco-friendly projects I developed together with the community was Flip-flop Art,’’ Church tells IPS, ‘‘This idea came about in 1997 when I saw boys on the beach making toys from flotsam.

‘‘At the same time, the turtles on the same beaches were finding it harder and harder to nest due to flotsam. So I merged the two – toys and turtles through flotsam.’’

She encouraged the community to craft marine animals, such as turtles, dugongs, whales, dolphins and crabs, to make them learn more about their environment. She also helped them sell these products.

Soon, the range of items made from recycled material increased as nothing was meant to go to waste. Promotional key-rings and the beads punched out of the flip-flops to make keyholes helped jumpstart the project.

The project received an order from WWF Switzerland for 15,000 turtle key-rings, which meant production had to be increased and more women got involved. As key-rings are made by punching holes in flip-flop pieces, they forged products from beads too.

Beaded curtains and jewellery were then sold at the craft fairs in Nairobi. ‘‘In this way,’’ Church explains, ‘‘money was generated to be reinvested back into the community through their skill base, and at the same time the beaches were being cleaned of rubbish.’’

The idea soon developed into a business venture. In 2005, after leaving the WWF project, Church partnered up with Bwanaali, a development worker from the local Muslim community.

‘‘She and I had the same passion: to find a market and develop the skills base of the community and to contribute to a cleaner ocean and general environment through art and trade.’’ In August 2005 they established UniquEco.

Initially, says Church, they imagined they would just ‘‘market’’ the products made by the beach communities. But, given the potential of the recycling business, they realised after six months that they had to go into production as well.

Hence, the Marula Studios workshop in Nairobi was set up in 2006 and now employs more than 20 workers. The more skilled workers earn up to 250 dollars per month, or more, depending on the volume of work; the least skilled about 125 dollars.

The market base has also expanded. Though tourists in Lamu are still a significant part of its clientele, UniquEco now gets more than 70 percent of its sales abroad. And though they get most of their queries online, trading online has proved to be difficult.

‘‘Not much is yet done ‘online’ per se, due to the difficulties in shipping and small money transfers to Kenya. So we have a few wholesales in the U.S., Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, France and Finland and that’s how most of the trade is done,’’ adds Church.

‘‘Consumers across the world are beginning to re-evaluate what they buy, how the products are made and what they represent.’’

The sources of recyclable material are also diversifying. This year, UniquEco has started purchasing flip-flops that clog the dead-end of the Nairobi river in the Kibera slums.

‘‘Cleaner urban waterways are as important as waste-free beaches. The women who do business with us are not only earning some money but are also removing some of the rubbish from the river," Church elaborates. She believes waste-collection and recycling is the key to cleaner cities, as well as to conservation of marine life, her primary passion.

Other than the tons of flip-flops, tyres and plastic waste removed from Lamu’s beaches, Church says it is hard to quantify the impact of her projects.

‘‘Currently, in the Kiunga Marine Reserve Area and in Lamu the Flip-flop Art Legacy is very evident. It is the local trade. Beads, small coconut mobiles, curtains and so on are sold to visitors. It is now the business for Muslim women who had no trade before.

‘‘We have also succeeded in making a small business concept work and show that trade, not aid, is the answer. There is much still to do, but the seeds have been sown,’’ she concludes.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 31 2009 (IPS)

A rare sense of optimism rose in Mogadishu in the early hours of Jan. 31 as people learnt that the leader of a moderate faction of the Union of Islamic Courts, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, had been elected as head the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

The new TFG president must deal with Islamist militants who control much of Somalia. Credit: Hassan Mahamud/IRIN

"The only period of peace in Mogadishu's 18 years of civil war was in the second half of 2006 when Sheikh Sharif's Islamic courts were in power," Mohammed Ali Siad of the Banadir Business Association told IPS over the phone from Mogadishu. "Now, two years later, no one seems better placed to reach out to Islamic insurgent groups and handle the crisis than him."

He added that "the toughest and most urgent challenge for the new president comes not from his enemies, but his erstwhile friends and allies" in the breakaway radical faction of the Islamic courts, called the Alliance for Re-liberation of Somalia-Asmara Group (ARS-A), which fought against the Ethiopian troops for two years, opposes the Djibouti process and vows to enforce its peculiar brand of Islamic sharia.

The most powerful militia in this alliance is al-Shabaab, a group on the U.S. terror list, which controls most of the strategic towns in south-central Somalia and which on Jan. 26 occupied the transitional government's capital Baidoa. Al-Shabaab, once the youth wing of the Sharif-led Islamic courts, now also holds many districts in Mogadishu, the country's historical capital where it is now targeting the remaining African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi to force them to withdraw as the Ethiopians have done.

The Wahhabi-inclined militia has also been in conflict with other Somali Sunni clerics who see al-Shabaab and affiliates as a threat to the traditional Somali religious culture of shrines and sufis.

Sharif, a cleric from the Hawiye clan who has been in exile for two years, first in Eritrea and now in Djibouti, replaces Abdullahi Yusuf, a Darod ex-warlord from the Puntland region. Yusuf was sacked in December by Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein when he opposed the U.N.-brokered peace deal between the TFG and the Sharif-led moderate Islamist opposition group.

The Djibouti peace deal arranged the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from south-central Somalia, and doubled the size of parliament to 550, with 200 new members to be nominated by the Hawiye-dominated Islamic opposition led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, and 75 from civil society organisations and the diaspora.

Hussein Omer, a TFG MP from Somaliland, told IPS that the parliament's expansion had tilted the balance of power in favour of the Islamist opposition, especially the Hawiye clan. "It is unjustifiable that a war-torn country with a population of just 8 million should have a 550-member parliament. The sheer logistics of getting them together and its cost will be hard to manage. The litmus test of this unity government's strength is whether it can return to south-central Somalia."

Other analysts also doubt the viability of the unity government envisaged by the Djibouti process.

"The key aim… was to create a powerful political alliance, capable of stabilising the country, marginalising the radicals and stemming the tide of Islamist militancy," said Daniela Kroslak of the International Crisis Group at a Jan. 23 briefing at the International Peace Support Training Centre in Nairobi. The Group recently released a report, "Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State".

"This was quickly made unachievable by splits within the insurgent Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia as well as the TFG, and the rapid advance by radical militias like Al-Shabaab, that reject the process. The ARS faction located in Asmara and its controversial leader, Hassan Dahir Aweys, also have stayed away from Djibouti. Those around the table – the ARS faction based in Djibouti (ARS-D) and the TFG – control very little territory," she added.

The disconnect between Somalia's volatile political reality and the U.N.-sponsored 'political' process to resuscitate a failed state through a transitional parliament has forced the U.N. Security Council to seek a larger, more international peacekeeping force to replace the 3000 or so African Union troops left in the country and facing a severe assault from the Islamic insurgents. No country, however, has yet shown willingness or interest to participate in such a mission.

Carrots for Militants?

In this context, Kroslak of ICG argues for "some carrots" for militant Islamists to try and engage them. "Whether Djibouti can get that far depends on drawing a critical mass of the insurgents into it at a time when those insurgents have good reason to believe they are winning on the battlefield and are likely to continue doing so. The outside powers that have sought to construct a peace process have great reservations about many of those groups and personalities."

Dr Stig Jarle-Hansen, author of "Mogadishu's Civil War Economy 1991-2008" and an expert on Islamist movements, agrees but he doubts that al-Shabaab or similar radical groups are amenable to U.N. or Western mediation.

"The ideology and modus operandi of these groups is different from all the other actors we've seen so far in the civil war," Jarle-Hansen told IPS, "They are driven by and thrive on an anti-west militant political philosophy. Indeed, some more extremist sections of al-Shabaab and groups like Al-Ansaar claim allegiance to al-Qaeda and vow to wage a global jihad. It will be difficult for Sheikh Sharif to bring them around."

He referred to suicide bombings, including one in Mogadishu on Jan. 24 which killed 20 people, and the destruction of traditionally revered sufi shrines by al-Shabaab fighters as a new phenomenon in Somalia.

"This version of militant Islam is at odds with the traditional Somali Muslim religious practices and values," he said.

At a time when U.N. estimates 3.2 million Somalis are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, especially food, the rise of Islamist insurgents has further restricted the already limited access of aid delivery organisations.

Mariam Hussein, director of the Mogadishu-based Ismail Jumale Human Rights Organisation, says that although al-Shabaab and people associated with such causes are a small minority among Somali Muslims, their growing power represents a failure of the transitional institutions being financed and shepherded by the international community.

"People are sick of two decades of fighting. About a quarter of a million are in refugee camps and the number of internally displaced is rising all the time," she says explaining the advance of these Islamic forces. " Ethiopia had intervened, with U.S. Support, on the pretext of defeating the so-called terrorists. Two years later all they have managed is to turn the population against international troops and make the fringe Islamist elements the most powerful militia in the country," she told IPS.

The international community is now relying on Sheikh Sharif and ARS-D to serve as a counterweight to the insurgents and help the unity government to establish some political order and state institutions. Whether he can return to Mogadishu and establish a semblance of order will, however, depend on whether al-Shabaab lets him do so.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 19 2009 (IPS)

As the eagerly awaited recovery in tourism after the election violence in Kenya takes off, bad news has come in the form of corruption allegations.

A French family strolling on Diani Beach, Mombasa, Kenya. Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

The objective of the ministerial action, his office tells IPS, is to ‘‘recover 35 million shillings (some 500,000 dollars) lost from the coffers of the board’’.

The Kenya Tourism Board’s mandate is to promote the east African country internationally as a tourist attraction—a task more urgent than ever in the wake of the end-2007 and beginning-2008 season, hit as it was by weeks of political and tribal violence leading to mass diversion of European and U.S. tourists.

Ironically, the scam involves foreign holiday trips by board officials. The corruption scandal compounds Kenya’s tourism troubles. Revenue from tourism last year fell by 54 percent compared with 2007 which had seen a record number of up to 1.8 million tourists coming to holiday in an apparently politically stable and fast-growing country.

‘‘Back then things looked so good that we made additional investments in anticipation of a bumper year in 2008,’’ reminisces Lacty de Sousa, general manager of an international tour company called Rhino Safaris.

Among other things, his company bought eight new land cruisers to meet the peak New Year season demand in 2008. These stand idle, parked outside his office.

All tour plans were shattered when catastrophe struck on the penultimate day of 2007.

After many years of a smooth political transition, having passed peacefully through a contentious constitutional referendum in 2005, and estimated economic growth of six to eight percent—to which tourism is the third largest contributor—Kenya suddenly plunged into a two-month long fit of organised ethnic killings.

Over a thousand people were left dead and 350,000 displaced.

Most tourists booked for that period did not arrive or diverted to some other destination. Those already in the country left.

Thanks to former United Nations chief Kofi Annan’s intervention, political rivals decided to mend fences soon and by the middle of 2008 the industry had recovered slightly. But it was still down by 32 percent against the same period in 2007. Hundreds of lodges and hotels remain closed. Many more Kenyans have lost their jobs.

But de Sousa argues that, rather than last year’s political violence, the bleak outlook in 2009 is more due to the global financial meltdown and Kenya’s inability to market itself.

‘‘Not even one foreign tourist was hurt or touched in the post-election violence. The country has regained a semblance of stability and remains a hospitable place for foreign tourists. But not many of them are taking holidays, in any case, as the financial crisis restricts their mobility.’’

The worst-hit by this, he says, are those at the bottom of the tourism industry’s chain—waiters, drivers, bartenders, guides —who lose often the only means of subsistence for them when they lose their jobs.

Given this dismal picture, it was puzzling to find at Christmas and New Year that almost all the main lodges and resorts were fully booked. Surely, the tourists have come back!

Julie Hamon, a marketing executive from Paris, was on the last flight from France that landed at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport on December 30, 2007 before violence engulfed Kenya and tourism came to a virtual halt.

She, like hundreds of others planning to spend their New Year holidays in Kenya, was never able to leave the airport and diverted to other destinations. This year she’s back again.

‘‘Nobody had foreseen what happened last year. But it seems to be an aberration and I find Kenya as hospitable to foreigners as ever,’’ she tells IPS.

Other signs, such as failed attempts to make reservations at any of the better known safaris and hotels and ever-rising transport and accommodation charges, also point to the fact that tourists are coming back.

In the third quarter of 2008 more than 5.65 million tourists arrived in Kenya and the numbers are likely to be even higher for the November 2008-January 2009 period. But tour operators argue it does not as yet represent a full recovery.

‘‘There are two reasons why, despite the comparative downturn in foreign arrivals, it is hard to find a booking in most resorts at this time and the fare remains high,’’ explains Winnie Wanjiru of major tour operator Imperial Travel.

‘‘Many of the hotels and lodges that closed last year have either not reopened or are doing only part-time seasonal business. So, there are fewer options for tourists. Secondly, a greater number of local Kenyan residents have to some extent filled the gap left by western travellers.’’

In terms of revenue, however, she explains, local customers do not generate as much as foreigners would. Fees for park entries, safari drives and hotel charges are much lower—in some cases, 100 percent lower—for a local tourist than for a foreigner.

Like de Sousa, Wanjiru is also hopeful that the recession in tourism is temporary. Both of them think that the fundamentals of the industry are sound.

‘‘We have a culture and an economy conducive to tourism,’’ enthuses Wanjiru.

She believes that, other than the unmatched beauty of Kenya’s safaris and mountain and beach holiday resorts, its public culture of hospitality guarantees that tourists stay for longer. ‘‘The fact that even during the worst phases of the violence no tourist was harmed or faced any threat reflects the Kenyan people’s friendly attitude towards foreigners.’’

Having spent over two decades in the tourism industry, de Sousa is also cautiously optimistic. He argues for tax breaks and better marketing. ‘‘We’ve been witnessing a five-year cycle of boom followed by a year or two of setbacks in the tourism industry.

‘‘The country’s image as a peaceful place was badly dented and then the global economic recession hit us, so the industry is in special need of an enabling regulatory framework – of pro-tourism government policies,’’ explains de Sousa.

‘‘Above all, Kenya has to rebuild its image. Only better and sustained marketing round the world can bring back the number of tourists back to where we are used to seeing it.’’

That it has survived in a post-conflict milieu and keeps going even during the worst global recession in several decades signifies Kenya’s strength in this sector.

However, as the main governmental body tasked to market Kenya abroad remains embroiled in stories of corruption, it may take a while before the country bounces back to its full tourism potential.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Dec 2 2008 (IPS)

The first woman from the Muslim majority island constituency of East Lamu to contest for a seat in Kenyan parliament, Shakila Abdalla is determined to give voice to the country's poor and marginalised.

Abdalla -- pushing legislation to protect women's rights. Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

A woman vying for a leadership role in a culturally conservative Muslim region was unheard of. "To many people it had come as a shock," says Shakila, "But someone had to break through the glass ceiling."

Abdalla actually lost the election to a long-serving incumbent, but was subsequently nominated to Kenya's 10th parliament on the party quota of the Orange Democratic Movement of Kenya (ODM-K).

A mother of two, Abdalla had broken several conventions even before entering politics. After earning a diploma in management, Abdalla worked in the island's nascent hospitality industry as a hotel executive, one of the few Muslim women from Lamu to join the profession. "That, too, had raised many eyebrows – a Muslim girl in hotel business. But times are changing and there is nothing in my religion that stops women from either doing business or taking part in politics."

The experience of taking part in elections, canvassing, losing a bitterly fought election and then eventually becoming a member of parliament has strengthened her resolve to bring a change in attitudes in Kenyan society towards women politicians.

"Voters judge us by a different standard than they would a male candidate," Abdalla reflects. "For instance, a man's marital status hardly ever comes into consideration – we had a president (Daniel Arap Moi) who ruled Kenya for 24 years without taking a wife. But, in the case of women in electoral politics, whether they are single, divorced or widowed becomes an election issue."

Warding off gossip campaigns from political opponents was only one challenge of her election bid. "The biggest problem is the money factor in Kenyan elections. Candidates literally buy votes. Sometimes they pay more to make people not to vote. Most women candidates do not have that kind of money or are unwilling to indulge in this practice," observes Abdalla.

An attitudinal change is required within the walls of parliament. Women make up more than 52 percent of the total population, but less than 10 percent of the 222-member parliament.

In August last year, the previous house rejected a bill that would have given women a 17 per cent share of seats. Even with just 22 women members – 15 of them directly elected – the 10th parliament has the highest female representation in Kenya's history.

Their limited numbers may explain the sense of solidarity among women in parliament. Setting aside party rivalries, female MPs are all gathered under the umbrella of the Kenyan Women Parliamentarians Association (KEWOPA), which focuses on women-specific legislation and advocacy with their male counterparts.

When she talked to IPS in the parliament's lounge, Abdalla was stepping out of a KEWOPA meeting with a group of 15 male members of parliament, lobbying them to support a bill to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), a widespread practice in many parts of Kenya.

"I do not merely represent the constituency I come from. I also have this obligation to push for legislation to protect women's rights across Kenya," says Abdalla. She noted that FGM is not a problem in her Lamu Muslim constituency – among Kenyan Muslims only the Somalis practice it. But it is an issue all women parliamentarians feel strongly about; they are determined to draft and push a bill in this session of the legislature to ban it.

She describes working in the male-dominated parliamentary environs as an empowering and learning experience. Rules of business and conduct, designed by men mostly for men, are not always sensitive to women's needs.

Abdalla cites an interesting example: "According to parliamentary security procedures, members of parliament could not carry handbags in the chamber. Our male counterparts were not affected by this regulation. They can carry pens, notebooks and other items in their jackets and pockets. But a handbag is an essential accessory for women which the makers of that rule did not appreciate," observes Abdalla.

Having the handbag rule changed this year has been a small victory for the women parliamentarians. Bigger, more consequential issues are on the anvil, says Abdalla, as a new constitution is being drafted. For her, land ownership for women is the key to enhancing their participation in politics and other fields of public life.

"One of the reasons why the last draft constitution put for referendum in 2005 was defeated was that it gave women the right to inherit land which the majority of men did not endorse. We have to make sure that this time women do get this right inserted in the basic law of the land."

But her heart stays in Lamu and with its people.

"Having seen them live in poor conditions since I've opened my eyes, I wanted to bring a change in their lives and the best way to do it is through parliament which provides a forum for legislation and a position of power to influence policymaking."

*The story moved Nov. 29, 2008 erroneously said Shakila Abdalla is divorced. Ms Abdalla is in fact happily married. IPS regrets the error.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Nov 14 2008 (IPS)

A doctor in Mogadishu gives medicine to a man complaining of an upset stomach. ‘‘This medicine won't work,’’ groans the patient, ‘‘I got sick after eating expired food; only an expired medicine will cure it.’’

Contrary to appearances, Mogadishu port has re-opened for business Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

Before the war there were 23 major markets in Mogadishu; now there are only two—the main Bakara Market, divided into 46 sectors, and the smaller but equally vibrant Souk Ba'ad. The biggest partner of Mogadishu's business community is Dubai with a total annual trade volume of 600-700 million dollars.

Organised in Nairobi by the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research, the recent seminar presented the findings of a research team led by Dr Stig Jarle-Hansen, based on a survey of Mogadishu's economy from 1991 to 2008.

The meticulous study covers different aspects of doing business in a civil war context—from its ethics to logistics, and from the ‘‘novel’’ means of raising business capital to the more ‘‘orthodox’’ techniques of survival such as raising a militia to protect business interests.

More than 150 companies and business concerns in four districts were studied by the Jarle-Hansen team made up of university students and interns. And among those invited to discuss and critique the report was a group of leading Somali businesspersons, academics from the Mogadishu University and civil society activists.

‘‘The economy of war depends on the structure of war,’’ said Jarle-Hansen. On that basis, he said, Mogadishu's economic history can be divided into five distinct periods: the era of destruction (1990-93); the United Nations (UN) interlude (1993-95); the era of fragmentation (1995-99); the time of the weak warlords (1999-2006); and the era of unification (2006-08).

During the first wave of war between clan militias fighting for control over the capital in the wake of President Siad Barre's fall, most of the businesses were destroyed and much of the capital was moved to banks outside the country.

‘‘Demand was skewed towards the basic necessities such as food and clothes. The people had no purchasing power. Economic actors had to depend on warlords.

‘‘And plundering became one of the means of getting starting capital,’’ according to Jarle-Hansen, giving the example of a famous businessman-cum-warlord who had city phone lines and cables uprooted to create a market for his copper stockpile.

As banks, too, collapsed with the state, informal financial mechanism filled the vacuum. Hawala, or the hundi system, took over as the main means of money transactions. Patronage of one warlord or the other—or many—became necessary to do business.

The city's infrastructure and its traumatised population never recovered from the shock of the first wave of violence, characterised by the Four Month War between the forces of warlords Farah Aideed and Ali Mehdi.

The following two years of UN intervention through UNISOM-I gave the business community in Mogadishu a new impetus. New guys with money came to town. Fuel imports became a major business. Demand for meat and seafood also increased.

Many new companies emerged, vying for UN contracts. Many businesspeople who had to flee the city returned.

The mobile phone was introduced in Mogadishu for the first time and it spread throughout the country like the plague. Telecommunication, mobile phones in particular, has since grown into perhaps the most efficient and successful business in Somalia, flourishing despite—or because of—the persistent conflict.

However, for those like Jarle-Hansen who are trying to collect data and put together a picture of the economy during the UN interlude, this period is the most intractable to investigate.

‘‘While other political and economic actors have been forthcoming and transparent in sharing information and data with us,’’ said Jarle-Hansen, ‘‘We could not get the same level of cooperation from UN organisations, especially their procurement departments, which leaves us with a significant gap in the project.’’

The UN withdrawal in 1995 was a blow to economic activity. Several companies catering exclusively to international organisations disappeared as soon as their clientele left. Another side-effect of the UN presence was the appearance of new warlords who had developed a stake in the way business was being conducted in a Mogadishu with a UN presence.

Post-UNISOM the war scene changed. Compact warring entities split. The fragmentation of organised militias meant smaller fiefdoms for the new and old warlords whose influence and power weakened both in terms of the space they controlled and the people they commanded.

‘‘Suddenly, for the business community, the warlords were not good patrons,’’ said Jarle-Hansen. The result was a growth in the private security sector. Madani, or local vigilante groups drawn from the communities in which the businesses operated, began to provide a security cover.

The business community grew stronger and more self-confident. The devastated Mogadishu got a new manufacturing sector. In the late 1990s pasta and candy factories were set up.

To this day, the Bakara market's own security system, funded by the business community with armed recruits from local communities, remains intact.

Jarle-Hansen explains that during the period of the weakened warlords, inter-company solidarity within the business community was strengthened and they came to rely on their own devices for protection against looting and militia attacks.

He cites the example of Hurmood Telecom, a major provider of communication services, 50 percent of whose staff were security guards, each of them getting 70 dollars per month.

‘‘When the 2004 transitional national government (TNG) was installed, we gave them our cooperation and donations, and surrendered our arms,’’ explained Syed Ali Mohammed Siyad, the chief of the Bakara market business association which is responsible for providing security to traders

‘‘We did the same when the Islamic Courts gained control and the business community has also been financially supporting the transitional federal government (TFG) since the ouster of the Islamic courts.

‘‘Except for the six-month interregnum of the rule by Islamic Courts (June-December 2006), neither the TNG nor the TFG have been able to provide us with adequate security. So we have to keep a minimum level of arms and armed men on our own to ensure that business remains functional,’’ Siyad told IPS.

Jarle-Hansen terms the last two years in the Mogadishu conflict as the period of unification. Instead of multiple warlords and factions, there have been two major, quite compact groups fighting to gain control of the historical capital of Somalia.

‘‘After more than a decade and half, the business community have to deal with state-like structures,’’ he said. The Mogadishu port reopened in 2006. Investment from the Somali diaspora has also increased.

But as the fighting goes on, intensified by the Ethiopian military intervention and continued presence since early 2007, these state-like structures have only added to the problems of doing business in Mogadishu.

In October this year the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and the UN-backed transitional government entered into a peace agreement.

But the extremist insurgents represented by the al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabab (the erstwhile youth wing of the ICU) oppose the peace deal and continue to gain ground militarily, last week capturing the Merka port, 50 miles from Mogadishu.

The Bakara market has often been a target of heavy shelling by the TFG and Ethiopian troops who allege that insurgents use the safe areas in the market to launch mortar attacks.

The chief of the traders' association, however, denies the allegation that they provide support to the insurgents. He claims political neutrality and cites the business community's cooperation with successive warlord governments and the ICU as a proof.

Ismail Abdillahi, head of the Banadir Business Association, quotes a Somali proverb to explain the business community's political role and how it would prefer environs of security and peace to any particular brand of government.

‘‘We have a saying that ‘whoever marries my mother is my uncle’,’’ said Abdillahi. ‘‘Whoever rules Mogadishu, our main concern and interest is business growth which can be possible only when the city regains a semblance of normality and the businessmen have a sense of security.’’

Given the new dimensions of violence – Al-Shabab being poised for battle with its parent organisation the ICU – the prospects of peace seems remote. For the foreseeable future, it seems business as usual in Mogadishu.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
MIGORI (Kenya), Nov 2 2008 (IPS)

Kenyan small-scale farmers have moved across the border into Tanzania to cultivate marijuana or ‘‘bhang’’, as the cannabis sativa plant is locally called. One of them is 25-year-old Steve Odhiambo. He believes that the international and local campaign against bhang harms only the small growers while the true profiteers get away.

Farmers showing stacks of bhang -- more ''valuable'' than maize. Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

Plans to kill the illegal crop, hidden in clearings amidst remote forests, with aerial sprays had to be put off because of opposition from environmentalists.

Of the 17,578 people arrested from 2005 to 2007 on drug-related charges, more than 500 were the growers of cannabis.

As a result, according to recent police estimates, Kenya’s output of marijuana has come down to 80 tons per year with a street value of 15 dollars per kg. Yet, the country remains the biggest consumer of bhang in east Africa.

‘‘The demand in the consumption market has not come down despite the curbs on production,’’ says an official of the anti-narcotics unit, who estimates that the supply is almost double the local produce because ‘‘wholesale and retail bhang dealers find other sources of acquiring the contraband. It’s a constant battle we have to fight.’’

A major front in this battle is the 769 km border with Tanzania. Most of the marijuana consumed in Kenya is grown in Tanzania and brought into the country across the largely unmarked border. It is impossible to police due to the cultural and linguistic affinity of people living on both sides, and the constant free movement of cattle and people.

Tanzanian farmers are not the only producers in the market. The police crackdown on Kenyan bhang farmers has forced many to rent land in the thick hilly forests across the border, mainly in the Arusha district.

It was 10 years ago when orphaned Steve Odhiambo left his hometown Migori in the Nyanza province to rent a half-hectare piece of land across the border in Roria to grow bhang.

‘‘I was just 15 years old and the first year of farming proved to be disastrous. The rain was good and the harvest was healthy but I had no experience of marketing the crop. I spent more money bribing people on both sides than I earned,’’ Odhiambo told IPS.

Asked why he decided to take up farming of an illegal substance as his source of livelihood, Odhiambi said growing maize, sugarcane or other food crops on small farms brings no money. There is a lot of ‘‘free land’’ on the Tanzanian side available for farming for as low as 25 to 30 dollars per acre for a season.

‘‘Bhang is used as a rotational crop, ready for harvesting in four to five months. Usually, I also grow it as a second crop within a maize or sugarcane field, which helps to keep it hidden,’’ Odhiambo said.

In a good year, harvest from his small farm can fetch up to 15,000 shillings (200 dollars). The biggest cost of production is the pair of pickers Odhiambo has to hire to reap the harvest. They charge about 10 dollars for their work. Other family members also give a helping hand.

Odhiambo tells that most of the Kenyans farming in Tanzania rent small, half to one hectare plots usually hidden in thick forests on the hilly slopes. Both men and women of the family take part in the enterprise.

But he does not smuggle the compact bushels, or haystacks called stones, back into Kenya. That is done by traffickers whom he refused to identify, except as ‘‘people in big cars or small trucks coming from Mombasa, Nairobi or other big cities to buy the harvest’’.

They are also the main profiteers, whereas small farmers like Odhiambo keeps struggling for survival in poverty. Two-hundred dollars, the net income of Odhiambo, is less than the market price of just one large bushel he sells to the interlocutors.

Despite the temptation of increasing his meagre profit, Odhiambo is not willing to take the risk of directly accessing the underground market, mainly in Kenya’s tourism hotspots.

Like most other aspects of the Kenyan economy, trade in illegal drugs too is largely dependent on tourism. Last year was one of Odhiambo’s best whereas violent troubles in 2008 have cut the demand and his profit down to about 140 dollars.

A third component in the economy of illegal drugs consists of small-time retailers in urban areas who complete the chain by selling the product to end-users. Like the small farmers, the margin of profit here too is much smaller than what the interlocutors are likely to make.

Odhiambo’s cousin, David Otieno, is a ‘‘beach boy’’ in Mombasa, selling thin rolls for 20 to 30 shillings (30 to 40 cents) a piece. He buys a small stone for eight dollars which, after the value addition of being rolled in cigarette papers, will fetch him 16 dollars.

On the other hand, in March this year reports by the U.S. state department’s bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs and International Narcotics Control agency raised queries about Kenya’s ability and commitment to the fight against drug-trafficking.

These American agencies said drug barons have been covering their illegal activities in Kenya by paying off law enforcement and other government officials as well as politicians. They estimated that drug lords could be laundering about seven billion shillings or 100 million dollars annually through Kenya.

‘‘The common perception that growing marijuana means some kind of wealth is false,’’ says Odhiambo, ‘‘People believe that because it is illegal, it brings large profits to growers. The fact is that the drive against bhang mainly targets only the growers – most of who are forced to resort to growing bhang because of poverty.’’

He advocates legalisation. ‘‘My experience says that if it is legalised, farmers like me would be able to access the market directly and thus make more profit.’’

As long as it is illegal, Odhiambo explains, the big landowners, who can protect their crops with armed guards, and the drug barons, who can manipulate the system, will remain the major beneficiaries of this trade.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Nov 1 2008 (IPS)

On the fifth day of every month a group of women entrepreneurs gather to share their experiences and discuss matters of trade. What makes this exceptional is that the women are from south-central Somalia and they meet in Mogadishu, one of the world's most devastated and dangerous cities.

Shamso Abdulle: Women can move around more because they do not belong to clans. Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

A mother of nine, covered in a fashionable head-to-toe Islamic veil or hijaab, and insistent on speaking only in her mother tongue Somali, Abdulle is an unlikely business success story. The east African country where she lives has not had a central government for over 17 years.

The city where she lives has been ravaged by an unending internecine war between clannish warlords and by foreign military interventions.

‘‘When I started my business of importing furniture and other goods from India in 1984, Somalia was a different country,’’ Abdulle told IPS in Nairobi last week where she was attending a two-day seminar on the war economy of Somalia's capital, organised by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research.

‘‘For six years I was able to do normal trade and earn enough to be independent and expand my business to other places like Dubai.’’

Then, in 1991, the civil war erupted. The state collapsed and the era of the warlords began. Like most other businesspeople, Abdulle had to abandon her business and flee the city.

‘‘I had to leave Mogadishu and live with my family in the bush for months. My savings were disappearing fast. As soon as the fighting receded a bit, with the intervention of a UN mission, I returned to the capital to explore the possibility of resuming trade,’’ she recalls.

On her return she found that the rules and norms of business had completely changed. The Mogadishu port was closed and would not open again until 2006, which forced businesses to other distant ports like El Ma'an, Merka and Kismayo.

Instead of government regulations and institutions, traders had to negotiate safe passage for their goods—and for themselves—with an assortment of militias. Money transfers through banks had been replaced by the informal hawala, or hundi, system.

It was difficult for women to get loans from the big businessmen who saw no assurance of repayment or getting a return. The public's purchasing power was down; the violence and insecurity was high, as it remains to this day.

But there was also a unique opportunity for women to step into business.

‘‘One of the main reasons why there are so many women traders in Mogadishu is because so many men died in the conflict or lost their government jobs. Also, working as street vendors or shopkeepers is considered beneath the dignity of men who before the war were working as doctors, lecturers and bureaucrats in Mogadishu,’’ explains Abdulle.

‘‘Most women were forced into business to ensure their families' survival in a chaotic city.’’

Also considered derogatory for a Somali man is to do domestic chores like cooking, taking care of the babies and house cleaning. Women in business, says Abdulle, also have to take care of their traditional roles at home.

Another reason why the number of businesswomen has increased during the conflict is the relative sense of security that women traders enjoy compared to men.

‘‘Women are clan-less and not engaged in fighting. They can carry goods and sell them into those areas of the city and other parts of south-central Somalia where men cannot,’’ Abdulle expounds. ‘‘They can make the best of the worst conditions.’’

In 2000, small and middle-income businesswomen got together to form an association to protect and promote women traders. Abdulle divides her group members into several categories.

Most women traders in Mogadishu sell qat or miraa, a mildly narcotic plant whose leaves and shoots are chewed for hours by people all over Somalia (and in other parts of the region) as a pastime. Large quantities of qat are imported from Kenya and Ethiopia which are then sold mainly by women vendors and shopkeepers.

‘‘Looting of miraa consignments on the way to the market from the airport is common. They have to pass through as many as 50 roadblocks or checkpoints and qat is perhaps the most sought after commodity in the city,’’ Abdulle says, describing the difficulties women traders face daily in the city.

She recalls that though there was peace during the brief six-month interregnum of the Islamic courts' rule in 2006, it was a bad time for women traders.

‘‘Not only had they banned the selling of qat but the Islamic courts also wanted all women to stay home and imposed harsh restrictions on them.’’

And then there are women who venture into the market just to ‘‘seek their luck’’ by selling food items. Another category consists of waqda, or vendors, who have taken a loan from the big businessmen and are trying to repay it through small restaurant businesses or as retail sellers.

Women are also into selling jerry-cans of petrol. Textile products and furniture is another area of trade for women.

‘‘Many of our members are those who carry goods on their shoulders as they have no shop and cannot rent a sales point. These itinerant traders form an essential part of Mogadishu's economy. A majority of women in business barely make the ends meet and remain poor. But they are trying.’’

She herself is from the other end of the spectrum, though she describes herself as a mid-level businesswoman. A regular traveller to Dubai, India and other countries, Abdulle identifies a number of problems Somali women traders face in the field.

‘‘Of course, insecurity within Somali, particularly in Mogadishu, is the biggest threat. But, in the field, Somali businesswomen also suffer due to lack of basic skills. Most of them are illiterate and need men's help to do basic accounting and communicate with the world outside.’’

Therefore, Abdulle explains, capacity building, especially in terms of education and English-language skills, is one of the core activities of her association.

‘‘Despite their contribution to business in Mogadishu against all odds and in extremely violent conditions, women remain voiceless,’’ observes Abdulle as she notes that there is no women representation in the 75-member main council of the Banadir business community.

‘‘Without the participation of women, Mogadishu's war economy could not have survived the ongoing conflict. From cleaning the streets to selling essential items like food and qat, women are critical for keeping life going amid the violent chaos of Mogadishu.

‘‘It is about time they also had a voice in the main decision-making body of businessmen,’’ Abdulle concludes.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Oct 16 2008 (IPS)

When in 2003 Kenya followed its neighbours Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi in introducing free and compulsory primary education for all, the response from the public as well as international donors was overwhelming.

Within the first few weeks more than 1.3 million new students were enrolled. Those who had previously not been able to send their children to school rushed to the school gates and the trend has continued ever since.

The numbers speak for themselves. UNICEF figures show that by 2006, the number of children enrolled in Kenya's 18,000 primary schools had doubled, and that now almost 80 percent of girls and boys are enrolled. And according to UN Development Programme figures, the overall literacy rate has shot up to 74 percent.

But however encouraging these numbers may be, they do not tell the full story.

As free primary education has increased participation and provided children from the poorer strata of society with hope, it has at the same time created significant problems. Rapid expansion of enrolment has overcrowded classrooms and increased the number of pupils to each teacher to such a high rate that it has resulted in a decline in the quality of education.

And for the country's poorest there are still a lot of costs to bear that hinder access to schooling. While the government has waived the tuition fee and provides textbooks, other classroom materials such as exercise books are still the parent's responsibility.

"To call it free primary education is misleading," says Gerard Mwangi of Mweiga village in Central Kenya, who is the father of three daughters. "For my youngest daughter in Standard Four I still have to pay for food, transport and uniform which is adds up to 5000 shillings ($70) per term," he said.

Mwangi's next daughter is enrolled at secondary school, and at this level too government reduced tuition fees earlier this year. Yet the four years of her secondary education, even with the tuition fee reduced to almost a quarter of what it was before this year, will cost him more than $3,600 in textbooks and other classroom materials.

The enrolment numbers drop when it gets to secondary level. According to UNICEF, secondary level enrolment for both boys and girls is 42 percent while attendance level is an abysmal 12 percent.

Paul Genchu, a retired education ministry official, says that what constitutes free schooling is usually taken to be merely waiver of tuition fee and provision of textbooks and classroom material only. "There are many other essential expenses," he says.

"So, though the policy of free primary and secondary education is sound and desirable and it has worked wonders in terms of statistical indicators, it is still beyond the reach of most Kenyan families to get a child through the full course of education."

While the number of students has risen exponentially since the introduction of free primary education in 2003, the number of new teachers has increased by only 2.6 percent.

In 1973 a policy of free primary education was introduced but it had to be reversed soon after as teachers and the school infrastructure could not cope with the one million new admissions that arrived in the first two months.

Referring to this, Genchu said, "Similar problems have become visible over the last five years. The pupil-teacher ratio has risen in some cases to more than 100-1. Even the average 60-1 ratio is quite high.

"It has eroded not only the standard of basic education but also that of secondary education as now there are higher numbers of aspirants than ever before."

Genchu also points out that the gap between different schools within the government system has increased due to free provision of primary education.

"Schools in the slums and in the marginalised regions like the Northeastern Province have seen the highest rate of enrolment. Yet, these were precisely the places where the infrastructure was already weak," he says.

Another consequence of the crowding of primary schools is the flourishing business of private schools. The education ministry estimates that there are over 2000 private schools, nearly 10 times the number that there were in 2002.

"Over the last five years, many people who would normally send their children to government schools have been forced towards private schools because of overcrowding," says Josphalt Macharia who runs a mid-level private school in Nairobi's Kilimani area. It charges $200 per term at primary level.

The demand for private education, he says, is now not confined to the rich as people from all socio-economic backgrounds are looking to the private sector to get their children quality education.

The initiative for free primary education has been strongly supported by the donor community. Encouraged by the public response and the Kenyan government's political will, reflected in the disbursement of $6.8 million in emergency grants to provide for basic classroom needs including textbooks, UNICEF donated $2.5 million, and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) donated $21.1 million. In 2004 additional grants of $50 million from the World Bank and $10.6 million came from DFID and the Swedish International Development Agency. The World Food Programme ($13.9 million) and OPEC ($9.9 million) too have contributed to making the programme a success.

Yet a recent research report has raised questions over the sustainability of the free primary education policy. The report compiled by CREATE (Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity), which is based at Sussex University and is funded by DFID, reviews recent research on the progress made by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda towards universal education.

The 2007 report, titled 'Policies on free primary and secondary education in East Africa' highlights research which states that while the Kenyan government raised its education budget in 2003-04 by 17.4 percent and was strongly supported by donor funding in its free primary education initiative, this may not be sustainable.

"The cost of providing free primary education is beyond the scope of the ordinary education budget, economic performance has not been strong and donor finance is often temporary. The free primary education initiative of 2003 was pursued as a matter of political expediency. It was not adequately planned and resourced and thus had the consequences of increased drop-out and falling educational quality," states the report.

In view of these challenges, the research concludes that the attainment of sustained free primary education an illusion in the context of Kenya.

Other research cited in the report states that despite the waiver on tuition fees, there remain other obstacles to enrolment especially among the poor. These include the need for children to work and concerns of parents about the quality of education, whether it leads to work and its utility later in life.

*with additional reporting by Kathryn Strachan in Johannesburg

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Oct 7 2008 (IPS)

It was a sad occasion, and an occasion to rejoice. Sad, said Dr Ludeki Chweya, introducing Flora Terah's new book, because her heart-wrenching story shows that physical abuse and torture are a weapon of choice to deter women's participation in electoral politics in Kenya.

And it was empowering, said Dr. Chweya, who is Kenya's permanent secretary for Home Affairs, because the book, "They Never Killed My Spirit, But They Killed My Only Child", represents the resilience of a woman who on Sep. 7 last year was attacked, pinned to the ground, kicked and punched by three men. She had to swallow balls of hair shaven from her head and mixed with faeces. Her wrists were scorched with thorns and cigarettes. With a dislodged disc in her upper spine from the kicks, Terah spent weeks in agony in hospital before she could walk.

Six months later Flora's only son, 19-year old John Mark, was murdered in Nairobi. A footballer for a local league club with dreams of becoming a coach, Mark's murder has been consigned to the unsolved cases file.

Flora Terah's crime was to dare to contest the election for Member of Parliament for the North Imenti constituency in Meru district, in Eastern Kenya.

Her ordeal was not a rare occurrence. The help desk at the Education Centre for Women in Democracy, a Nairobi-based non-governmental organisation, handled 153 cases of electoral violence against women candidates in the run up to the December 2007 elections and received via email and phone another 258 complaints of harassment and torture of women

According to a report of the Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC) in Nairobi's Women Hospital, rape and other forms of sexual assault were used as a "weapon of ethnic and political violence" even before the elections. During the eviction campaigns after the election dispute, the threat of rape was usually the first warning. If it did not work, actual rape humiliated rival communities and forced them to leave.

Most of these women and their stories are reduced to mere numbers in media reports of the conflict. Flora Terah, however, wanted to tell her story and mobilise Kenyans to stop gender-based violence.

"There were two ways to react to what had happened to me," she told IPS at the book launch. "I could have given in to the trauma of physical humiliation and loss of my only child and given up on life. Or, I could do something to heal myself and to not let my tormentors kill the spirit of life in me."

She started a campaign group, Terah Against Terror, to mobilize women and young men against domestic and political violence. In May, in an interview with IPS two months after her son's murder, Flora Terah said she wanted to write about her tragic experience of being a woman in Kenyan politics.

Broken arms, unbroken dreams

At the book's launch in Nairobi on Oct. 2, Terah was surrounded by other survivors of electoral violence. Among them was Yvonne Khamati, at 21 the youngest-ever aspirant for Kenyan parliament when she ran in 2002. Now Kenya's ambassador to UN-Habitat, Khamati contested for the Makadara constituency in Nairobi. She was verbally harassed, threatened to be stripped in public if she did not quit and then attacked by unidentified people who broke her arm.

Next to them was Alice Wahome, an activist of the National Rainbow Coalition party, who was beaten up at an election meeting at the headquarters of the Party of National Unity, in front of her male colleagues, who did nothing. It took two vehicles full of police to rescue her, after a woman colleague called for help.

All three stood there as symbols of resilience and resistance—women who braved torture and physical harm in pursuit of their political dreams. And in all three cases the attackers have yet to be brought to justice.

Indeed, most abused women in Kenya are unable to bring a court case in such crimes. The GVRC reported in June that legal proceedings were started in only 20 of the 653 cases of sexual violence the Centre had handled in Nairobi.

Jennifer Shamalla, the book's editor and a lawyer, calls for police and judicial reforms to curb the culture of violence against women. "The onus of proof lies on the victim. Case registration and court procedures, if a case ever reaches that stage, are not women-friendly," Shamala observed.

"And then it costs money to pursue a case through a lawyer, which not all women survivors of violence can afford. The slow judicial system also does not encourage pursuit of justice," Shamalla added.

Ludeki Chweya, the permanent secretary for home affairs, endorsed the call for reform: "National policies are often biased against women."

Flora Terah's book is written from the heart. It shows glimpses of Kenyan society from a woman's viewpoint: growing up in a large family where girls can bring wealth through their dowry; the ordeal of a young woman pregnant out of wedlock facing her conservative family and then raising a child as single mother; a development worker training community women for leadership; and the trauma of her own injury and her son's death.

Her story is compelling and candidly told. Some proofreading errors tell of a lack of resources and haste in publishing, but will not distract readers from the courage and determination of a woman who writes to heal herself and her country.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Oct 6 2008 (IPS)

Ole Kaparo works as a school teacher in Nairobi, though his family still herds cattle in the Masai pastures of the north Rift Valley province. Five years ago, during a prolonged spell of drought, he left this traditional life to seek work in the city.

"The survival of the livestock depends on predicting the rains, something our ancestors used to do by observing the movement of the birds, the flowering time of trees and cloud patterns," says Kaparo, "Now, rains do not come when they are needed and floods hit us when they are not expected."

Over the last 25 years, there has been a four-fold increase in the incidence of drought, punctuated by unseasonal and intense rains. Roughly six of Kenya's 30 million people are pastoralists, herding their livestock in the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute about 75 percent of the country. It is these people who have been hardest hit by the dramatic changes in the weather.

Pastoralists have long been adept at surviving in dry conditions, but they rely on freedom of movement to manage the range lands.

"It's not only pasture and water that they have to move looking for," says John Letia, Oxfam's regional pastoral programme coordinator. "Mobility is also essential to pastoralists to move away from disease. In traditional range lands, pastoralists had dry and wet season grazing areas. They had a seasonal migratory calendar for these areas."

That calendar is now elusive. The Kenya Food Security Group, consisting of UN agencies, NGOs and government representatives, notes that severe drought-related shocks that used to occur every ten years now hit every five years or less.

As a result of these changes, more and more people from pastoralist communities are forced to abandon their millennia-old culture. According to the Kenya Bureau of Statistics, pastoralists make up 18 percent of Kenya's population and the group has the highest rate of poverty. The poorest districts in the country lie in its North Eastern Province, where over 80 percent live below the poverty line.

Many take up a settled life in villages and towns – where without any assets and little skill for urban income-generation, they find life difficult. An Oxfam field report on the Turkana district describes ex-pastoralists as surviving on food aid, gathering wild food, fishing, and begging.

A 2006 Christian Aid study of the North Eastern district of Mandera, found a third of herders living there – around half a million people – had been forced to abandon their pastoral way of life. So many cattle, camels and goats were lost to drought that more than half of the families who remain as herders need outside assistance to recover.

The livestock sector accounts for almost all household income in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands. The Kenyan Pastoralist Thematic Group estimates that pastoralism provides direct employment and livelihoods for over 3.5 million Kenyans. Yet successive government policies which have curtailed their right to use the land have left the pastoralists marginalised.

A 2008 Oxfam report on challenges to the pastoral lifestyle in East Africa, titled 'Survival of the Fittest', states: "It is clear that the value generated by pastoralist communities is not translating into prosperity, despite the suitability of pastoralism to its dryland environment. The question is why is this is so?"

The report identifies factors which, in addition to climate change, contribute to the growing poverty of pastoralist people. Under-investment in programmes to sustain pastoralism, the demand for more land for agriculture and wildlife parks, and inappropriate policies which follow a model imported from the temperate grasslands of North America. This model of fixed grazing lands has caused overgrazing and land degradation.

The future of pastoralism

Together these factors have altered the traditional symbiotic relationship between herdsmen and the ecology of drylands. Letia believes the methods developed over many thousands of years of pastoral activity can be used to address the challenge of climate change but that they will require investment in appropriate development projects to make pastoralism sustainable. Such projects also rest on changes in national policies as well as enhanced regional cooperation to grant the pastoralists rights over the range lands which cover lands across the national borders of East Africa.

In an effort to develop policies to tackle the effect of extreme weather, the UK government's Department for International Development (DFID), together with the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), have set up a joint venture to investigate climate change in Africa. The programme brings together scientists and governments.

One of its projects aims to shed light on pastoralists' vulnerability and coping strategies in Turkana and Mandera districts in northern Kenya. Researchers are examining indigenous methods, best practices and existing arrangements for adapting to climate change. The project focuses on the effect of policies which have restricted herd movement and tried to settle pastoralists, but with limited access to critical resources.

In a changing climate with increased drought, herd movement will become even more important as an adaptation strategy, and the project seeks practices that improve herd movement, such as livestock corridors, while securing pastoralists' right to water and forage.

Traditionally, African farmers have used indigenous knowledge to understand weather and climate patterns and make decisions about crop and irrigation cycles. However, the variability that comes with climate change has reduced their confidence in traditional knowledge.

Scientific weather forecasts, on the other hand, are formulated on a much larger scale and are presented in a way that is unfamiliar to farmers. To address this problem, the researchers are trying to integrate indigenous knowledge into scientific climate forecasts at the local level, where it can be used to by communities. The project is being carried out in Nganyi community in western Kenya, an area that is known to have a well-established system of traditional weather forecasting.

A number of other organisations are trying to offset the effects of climate change. Farm Africa have introduced small stock such as goats as one of the ways to help communities adapt. Veterinarians Sans Frontiers of Belgium have advocacy projects on cross border livestock. In Tanzania, Vet Aid have a community livestock trade buying project aimed at creating markets for. Oxfam runs cash-for-work programmes rather than food-aid handouts.

Kaparo, however, is not optimistic about the future of his traditional way of life. "A growing number of youth, dismayed by their perennial poverty, see pastoralism slowly dying in the face of challenges beyond their control and in a country where everyone calls them marginalised."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Sep 23 2008 (IPS)

At its source in the hills of the Thogoto Forest, the Mbaghati river adds a gushing noise to the quiet verdant landscape.

"Nairobi rivers are increasingly choking with uncollected garbage; human waste from informal settlements; industrial waste..." Credit: Karl H Mueller

Just downstream, where it merges with other streams to form the Nairobi River and runs through the Kenyan capital, the clear water turns into a muddy brown sewage-like flow, unfit for human use and inhospitable to aquatic life.

It was not always so.

"Older residents of the capital remember a city whose rivers were full of fish, running through an impenetrable thicket of flora and fauna typical of a swamp," says William Wambuga, director of the Botanic Gardens, a project of Nature Kenya, a non-profit organisation working to create public awareness about biodiversity.

Massive urbanisation – Nairobi has grown from 1.3 million people in 1989 to over 4 million today – has taken its toll on the city's environment. Wambuga told IPS that when the Fisheries Department had plans to set up fish farms on different sites on the Nairobi River in 1996, laboratory analyses of water samples revealed increasing levels of pollution leading to cancellation of the project.

Comprehensive sampling to identify sources of pollution was begun in 1999 as part of the Nairobi River Basin Rehabilitation Programme launched by the Kenyan government in collaboration with UN-Habitat, UNDP and UNEP, and funded with money from Belgium and France. The baseline results were reported in a 2005 UNEP report which stated:

"Nairobi rivers are increasingly choking with uncollected garbage; human waste from informal settlements; industrial waste… liquid effluents and solid waste; agro-chemicals, and other wastes especially petrochemicals and metals from micro-enterprises and overflowing sewers. This situation has occasioned spread of water-borne diseases, loss of sustainable livelihoods, loss of biodiversity, reduced availability and access to safe potable water, which affects human productivity."

The current phase of the project, which finally began – three years late – in June 2008 aims to clean up the river waters and implement projects for solid waste management through a combination of private sector projects for waste management and involving riverine communities in clean-up operations. The plan is to establish long-term public-private partnerships to prevent residential and industrial pollutants from entering the river.

Impact on Biodiversity

After nine years of this stop-and-start effort, the waters of the Nairobi River and its tributaries remain muddy and inhospitable to species in the water and along its banks.

"If you look at the riverine landscape, it has been impacted for two reasons directly related to urbanisation: one, encroachment and clearing of land beyond the building space, and people using the rivers as their backyards, throwing garbage there. The loss of vegetation and more pollution have also resulted in a reduction of bird population as well as insects at a faster rate than ever seen before," says William Wambuga.

Wambuga laments flawed urban planning and municipal oversight, as well as a lack of environmental awareness among citizens and decision makers alike.

"I look at the newly-built avenues and think that corridors could have been left for the birds and insects native to this place to stay in their habitat. If we continue to clear natural habitats, then we'll be talking about how our agricultural lands are no longer productive and be bringing in the fertilisers when the problem lies elsewhere," Wambuga tells IPS.

"There is a wider economic downside of the loss of biodiversity in the cities. But people do not have the information. There is a missing link between scientific information and people's day-to-day life. That interrelationship ought to be established," he says. "We need to mainstream this subject. All stakeholders in the process of urban development should sit round a table and discuss how to plan the city in a way so as to preserve biodiversity."

He identifies government decision-makers as the key to addressing environmentally unsound urbanisation. In addition to creating awareness among town planners, bureaucrats and developers, Wambuga believes that the education policy both in the formal and the informal sector should be geared to provide the maximum information.

"A lot of information and research is just sitting in the shelves. We need to get it out to target constituencies – school groups, universities and government officials who make policy decisions," says Wambuga. "From places like the Botanic Garden, this information needs to flow down to people."

Spreading the Word One place where the message about the need to preserve endangered plant species is being promoted is at the Nairobi Arboretum. Adjacent to State House, the president's residence, the 101-year old arboretum serves a dual purpose: as both a popular recreational site and a conservatory for botanists and researchers.

On a sunny Sunday, the Nairobi Arboretum is abuzz with activity. Couples can be seen sitting under exotic trees, joggers hurry past picknicking families. At the edges of a cricket game taking place in a small clearing, a group of students from a Langata primary school are intently listening to their science teacher explaining how the silver oak standing above them is special.

The tree is native to the Eastern Province, where craftsmen use silver oak wood to produce carvings of the finest quality. But they have cut down so many trees in recent decades that there are almost none of them left, beyond the ones being cultivated in the Arboretum. The children will soon saunter down the slopes to see the polluted river which crawls around the Arboretum, hidden under a busy Nairobi road.

Constance Muholo of the Friends of the Nairobi Arboretum tells IPS that one of the major activities of her organisation is to engage schools and young students to sensitise them to conservation and environment protection issues. "We arrange lectures in schools, encourage teachers to bring students for visits and complement science teaching which still does not have sufficient syllabi on environmental protection," says Muholo.

"Urbanisation does not have to be a foe of the environment. Cities can grow and expand in a sustainable way. What is critical is for the next generation of city dwellers to be informed and aware of the costs of their actions," she says, stating one of the objectives of her organisation.

This tension between environmental conservation and people's development needs, says Wambuga, can be managed through good planning, urban management and, most critically, proper education.

"We need to get people from point A to B, set definite goals in our education policy and then gauge its impact after, say, three years. We just don't need to talk endlessly about it or merely commemorate special environment days. Tangible results will require tangible measurable policy changes and long-term commitment."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Sep 16 2008 (IPS)

In May 2008, a group of civil society activists launched a campaign to reform Kenya's archaic abortion laws, sparking a countrywide debate. Now, as a new draft bill on women's reproductive health and rights seeking to decriminalise abortions is set to be tabled in parliament, the battle lines between opponents and advocates of abortion are clearly drawn.

If adopted by parliament, the bill, prepared by a network spearheaded by the Kenya chapter of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, the Coalition on Violence Against Women and the Kenya Medical Association, would make Kenya only the second African country (after South Africa) to relax its highly stringent and restrictive abortion laws.

The bill's legislative future, however, seems bleak. "Kenya is not ready for it," says lawyer Alice Wahome, a leading activist of the National Rainbow Coalition party. "There are 20 women and 200 men in the parliament. Outside the legislature, opposition from the churches and patriarchal social norms will also not allow any such change. No chance."

That the new bill has ignited an intense debate in a country where abortion remains a religious and cultural bugbear rather than a matter of women's health and rights, says Wahome, is a big step forward in itself.

Peter Karanja, chief of the National Council of Churches in Kenya, summarily dismisses the proponents of the new bill as "some feminist lobbyists." He told IPS that the proposed law "should not be tabled in parliament. Neither should it be passed if tabled. It is an outrageous attempt to legalise abortion."

The abortion law in Kenya dates back to 1897 and it states: "Any person who, with intent to procure miscarriage of a woman, whether she is or is not with child, unlawfully administers to her or causes her to take any poison or other noxious things, or uses force of any kind, or uses any other means whatever, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years."

Another section of the present law criminalises women seeking abortion and stipulates seven years of imprisonment. The only exception this law makes is in cases where, in the considered view of doctors, it can be proven that the mother's life is in danger.

Yet, the law is applied only in a few exceptional cases. In fact, it has only helped to raise the cost of safe abortions and push most women seeking to end pregnancy into the hands of quacks who use all sorts of poisonous potions and sharp objects.

According to a 2004 study by the ministry of health, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and titled "A National Assessment of the Magnitude and Consequences of Unsafe Abortion in Kenya", 300,000 women get abortions in Kenya each year, nearly half of them between 14 and 24 years of age. More than 20,000 of them end up in hospitals with complications after unsafe abortions.

Another study of hospitals in Western Kenya notes that almost 50 percent of all gynaecological emergencies arise from badly-performed abortions. The research, which was carried out in 2006 by Kakamega Provincial General Hospital in Western Kenya, also observed that more than half such patients were teenagers.

Why a New Law

"The existing law is incongruent with and uninformed by the ground reality," says Dr James Mwangi, an obstetrician at a state-run hospital in Nairobi. "All hospitals receive cases of difficult pregnancies and of abortions gone wrong. As doctors, we face a stark choice and the law is prohibitive". A paper by Boaz Otieno-Nyunya and Peter Bundi Gichangi, both doctors and members of the Kenya Medical Association, says that the present law lacks "clear definitions of when life begins, when is a woman's life in danger, what the legal definition of abortion is vis-à-vis the medical definition."

Multiple and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the abortion law by courts, when to intervene in a case of unwanted, unplanned pregnancy and what is reasonable intervention within the confines of the current law are some other issues that haunt medical practitioners.

"The law as it is now is ineffective and difficult to enforce being commonly ignored by doctors and patients alike," says the paper. The doctors want to expand their discretion in the matter and decriminalise and regulate abortion under a different law. They recommend: "Leave the personal choice to the woman and provide an enabling environment for making this choice."

In addition to seeking legal protection for doctors having to perform abortions, the paper also calls for broadening the circumstances where abortion is permissible to include rape, incest, mental state abnormality, failed contraception and social stigma.

Kenya is also obliged under its international commitments to improve its reproductive and sexual health services in order to reduce the maternal and infant mortality in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals.

The Maputo Protocol adopted by heads of state and government of the African Union in its 2003 summit in Mozambique, urges states to respect and promote the health of women especially in the area of sexual and reproductive health. Meeting these commitments requires an array of legal reforms, including a revision of the existing abortion law.

Why Now?

This is not the first time that advocates of women's reproductive rights have launched a campaign to legalise abortion. A similar drive was launched in 2004 when political parties were engaged in a process to redraft the constitution.

Now, the grand coalition of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga is again tasked to draft a new constitution within a year. Human rights activists and doctors see in this process an opportunity to push the bill forward.

"It's an old battle being fought afresh." Says Alice Wahome. She recalls how the churches and the male-dominated constitutional process thwarted all attempts to revise the abortion law despite inserting a Bill of Rights in the proposed constitution (which was rejected in a 2005 referendum).

"On the one hand, the Bill of Rights provided several fundamental rights to the Kenyan woman. On the other hand, the section immediately following the one that guaranteed all citizens the right to life stated that 'The life of a person begins at conception'. It was paradoxical and a fatal blow to the movement for reproductive rights," Wahome observes and hopes it won't be repeated in the new constitution.

There is a slim chance, though, that this time around the campaign may get a strong political supporter from within the ruling alliance.

When she was the minister for water resources and management, Martha Karua told a convention of doctors in 2004, "Let us not bury our heads in the sand, let the hypocrisy attached to the debate end and let sobriety prevail.

"Let us not perform abortion for ourselves, our wives and daughters in private, but pretend to condemn the practice in public because it is politically and socially right to do so… Let us respect the body integrity of women and not make their bodies a battle ground."

Now, as the minister for justice and constitutional affairs, Martha Karua is deeply engaged in the process of drafting the new constitution. She has also announced herself to be a presidential candidate in 2012 and campaigning aggressively. Political empowerment of women, after all, will be the decisive factor even in the abortion debate.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Sep 14 2008 (IPS)

The most urgent test of the grand coalition in Kenya is resettlement of the estimated 350,000 or so people made homeless by the violence after the December 2007 elections. Launched in May, the government's Operation 'Return Home' has been riddled with flaws and many experts on internal displacement argue it has exacerbated the crisis rather than resolving it.

Official admission of the multiple failures of Operation Rudi Nyumbani, as the plan is known in Kiswahili, has come from one of the deputy prime ministers, Uhuru Kenyatta, who was sent by President Kibaki to visit some resettlement sites earlier this month.

At a transitional camp in Gitwamba, in Trans-Nzoia district, a surprised Kenyatta said, "(Provincial) administrators had convinced the president that the resettlement programme was almost complete, yet thousands of people are still living in camps."

Kenyatta's comment underlines the government’s insensitivity which Keffa Magenyi, national coordinator of the Kenya IDP Network, identifies as one of the major flaws of Operation Return Home.

"The idea behind Operation Rudi Nyumbani – that those forcibly displaced, most of them very poor, should go back to their homes and farms rather than getting resettled elsewhere – was in accordance with the spirit and intent of the national reconciliation process," Magenyi told IPS. "But it lacked strategic planning, coordination and consultation with the IDPs."

Magenyi is himself a displaced person. On four different occasions since 1993, he has seen his home torched and family members killed or forced to flee to camps by political violence in the Rift Valley. Four months into Operation Rudi Nyumbani, they are still waiting to go home.

"There was no data mapping," observes Magenyi, "Where the IDPs had come from and where they should go. No data or census of the displaced people either. There are simple and effective methods of doing it. The government also did not use the data that was available with different organisations like the Kenya Red Cross. They used their own criteria."

The government criteria, based on proof of land ownership, meant that several IDP groups, such as small traders, farm workers and other people without land, remained unacknowledged or outside the resettlement and compensation plan.

There were no clear deadlines for the various phases of the operation, just a political imperative to be seen to act. A lack of coordination between a special ministry set up for resettlement, working from the office of the president, and provincial administrations actually tasked to implement the plan also led to haphazard management.

So most of the camps are officially closed and most of the IDPs ticked as returned home; but the overwhelming majority have only been moved to camps somewhere else. The very few who have gone back face an unwelcoming, sometime hostile, response from their erstwhile tormentors.

Magenyi, whose network is collecting data from IDPs across the country, estimates that 15 percent of them are still in the original camps, 45 percent are now integrated IDPs (those living with relatives or in other rural and urban host communities of their co-ethnics, segregated along ethnic lines) and the remaining 40 percent have officially gone back, but are actually living in transit camps.

On Sep. 3, the government launched its compensation plan for returning IDPs at one of those transit camps. The ceremony in the Rift Valley town of Molo came to a premature end, however, as about 5000 IDP protesters surrounded the officials, challenged the authenticity of the lists drawn up by the government and refused to take the money.

Angry youth demanded that government officials explain why it took so long to come to the camps with the compensation plan and that too with dubious lists. An IDP representative in Molo, Philip Kamau, questions the provincial administration’s beneficiary lists, which blocks out hundreds of genuine victims of post-election violence. The protesters forced the officials to withdraw the list and agree to make a new one.

On Sep. 9, protesting IDPs blocked the Eldoret-Nairobi highway and police had to use force to break up their demonstration against delayed payments, unreliable beneficiary lists and the lack of security. Dozens were reported to be injured.

The haphazard resettlement has also broken hundreds of families, who have been forced to leave children behind in camps. In the Rift Valley district of Molo, one of the main IDP camp sites, a Unicef report last month identified 1,752 cases of children separated from their families. The report also counted 850-900 child-headed households in Molo district.

"There must be many more in other camps. And it's because Operation Rudi Nyumbani did not take into account the fact that there are IDP children who need to go to school but there is not enough security in the host communities they are returning to," says Jacqueline Klopp, a founding member of the Nairobi-based Internal Displacement Policy and Advocacy Centre and a professor at New York's Columbia University.

Klopp sees not only a lack of consultation with the IDPs but also a lack of respect for them. "If you are an IDP, it means you are poor, stigmatised and you are a problem. It is not so. These displaced people are teachers, traders, skilled people who are citizens of this country.

"They are talented, capable people who have organised themselves. They say (to the government), 'Come talk to us. We'll tell you who can go back, which areas are safe for return and which are not, who among the IDPs do not want to go back, what are the alternatives.' But the government has not done that," Klopp told IPS.

Dangers of politicisation

A recent conclave of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the party of Prime Minister Raila Odinga sharing power with President Mwai Kibaki, was embroiled in lengthy debates over what members of parliament from the Rift Valley should get in return for supporting Odinga.

Also on the agenda was a demand for amnesty for the 'boys' arrested for crimes during post-election violence in January and February 2008. "No resettlement without amnesty" is a slogan being used by communities resisting the return of IDPs.

Under pressure, Odinga reiterated his support for amnesty, eliciting criticism from his partners in the grand coalition.

A number of ODM MPs and ministers have been blamed for mobilising the campaign of violence both in reports by civil society and during the hearings of the Waki commission of inquiry into post-election violence.

But the arrests extend beyond ODM supporters. Hundreds of pro-Kibaki Kikuyu youth are also behind bars for attacks. There are significant numbers of IDPs from a wide number of ethnic groups including Kalenjins, Kissis, Luos and Luhiyas.

"The violence and displacement in 2008 is different (from those in the 1990s). This time the IDPs include not the Kikuyus only, but also many other tribes. It is a cross-ethnic national issue," says Magenyi of the IDP Network, who believes ODM cannot continue to isolate the issue amnesty for its supporters from the overall resettlement and reconciliation plan.

"The issue of amnesty for the arrested youth is being raised to divert attention away from the real culprits. The debate on whether to grant amnesty should start at the other end. It ought to be focused on the powerful politicians who had used those young boys to unleash the violence."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Aug 20 2008 (IPS)

For the first time in its 60 years of existence, there is a ray of hope for the one million inhabitants of Kibera, one of the world's most densely-populated slums. After spending most of his life on opposition benches – or in prison – as a champion of the poor, the member of parliament for this desperately poor constituency is now the prime minister of Kenya.

A kerosene kiosk in Kibera Credit: Najum Mushtaq/IPS

"We understand his limitations as he is only sharing political power with President Kibaki. But all we are asking for is the basic human dignity and survival."

Whatever approach you take to enter Kibera, the disparity between Nairobi's poor and rich is conspicuous. You either go past a scuba diving club and a majestic Catholic church, or gaze at the palatial Moi Kabarak, the residence of former president Daniel Arap Moi, which sits in the corner of a golf course just beyond the last of Kibera's shacks.

The Royal Golf Course itself is contiguous with Kibera. Mis-hit balls by aspiring golfers sometimes land in the winding maze of narrow dirt and stone pathways, lined with heaps of rubbish and divided by a labyrinth of open sewage channels, overflowing with people struggling to survive. Children throw the balls back and usually get a 20-shilling coin thrown back at them from the lush, manicured greens.

On paper, all of Kibera is government land and all construction here is illegal. But its inhabitants pay varying amounts of rent to 'landlords' who, with the connivance of district and provincial administration officials, have managed to grab rights to build on this land.

Most shacks are roughly 3 x 3 metres, shared by up to eight people; glued to one another in a patchwork of different shapes. For toilets, residents must either pay for access to a pit-latrine used by 200-odd other people, or defecate in a bag and throw it over the wall.

Similarly, control over the few pipelines bringing in stolen water is in a few hands. Twenty-litres of water cost up to ten shillings (6.5 cents).

"Kibera is an ongoing, daily emergency," says Caroline Testud, co-founder of the Coalition for Peace and Development (COPE), a new alliance of 14 community-based groups and NGOs. "Humanitarian assistance by international and local NGOs is needed but it is not a substitute for the government's role. A durable solution warrants political will and governmental action."

Kibera, like its counterparts in Kampala, Lagos, Lusaka or Cape Town, signifies state failure of criminal proportions in managing urbanisation.

The government has no accurate idea what's going on in Kibera: there is no official map of the area; the last census took place in 1987, and no one is sure about the mortality rate or any other vital socio-economic statistics. The area's population is given as between 700,000 and 1.2 million.

College student Christian Skaro, a resident of Kibera's Ayani village, cautions against stereotyping Kibera as a dangerous place infested with criminals which you cannot visit without being mugged. "There are no gangs or gang warfare as such in Kibera. It should be obvious to all that most people here work or are looking for work. 65 per cent of Nairobi's industrial labour and work force comes from Kibera.

"And though the government does not recognise it as a formal settlement, the officials of Nairobi City Council and other departments are always busy collecting taxes and other levies from the shopkeepers and traders of Kibera.

"You can see it's a vibrant place. People live here. You can see the potential of its people in the way they deal with their daily survival needs."

Pastors and community politicians

There is no consolidated data on the hundreds of organisations working in the area, but some activists estimate there are more than 700 NGOs and community groups working on projects in Kibera, among them a crowd of expatriates working for an alphabet soup of United Nations acronyms, and international and national NGOs.

Parallel to this is a religious fervour, palpable throughout the week, that peaks on Sundays when church sermons and street pastors raise a cacophony of holy noise. Most of the better buildings in Kibera are churches or mosques.

However, especially after the experience of post-election violence, skepticism among the youth about both the NGOs and churches is growing.

"For long we've had only two kinds of community leaders in Kibera: pastors and community politicians. Both have misled us. Now new leadership is emerging from within the youth that does not want to see the world through tribal and sectarian lenses," says Skaro.

Yet, everyone IPS talked to in Kibera was hopeful that with Raila in charge, change will happen. "A solid platform is available to introduce new policies. There is a strong force of young and organised men and women our MP can rely on," says Peter Obiero, a language teacher. He believes that people are keen to leave the past behind and that there are emerging signs of social change.

One such endeavour was launched last Saturday. Past an impromptu assembly of six young men passionately discussing national politics with a pro-Raila bias, beyond a heap of rubbish where a lucky scavenger had found a pair of socks and a banana for his lunch, in a field next to a church restored after being burnt a few months ago in Kenya's post-election violence, two teams of women readied themselves to play a game of football to mark the inauguration of Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness, a group of 300 women affected by the violence and now part of the COPE.

The group's coordinator, Jayne Anyango, acknowledged that plenty of 'briefcase NGOs' have made people doubt the value and effectiveness of voluntary activism. She says her group consists of women who were directly affected by the violence and their motivation is quite personal.

"You cannot tar the entire sector with the same brush. We have sought no funding and rely entirely on contributions from our members and individual supporters. Membership is not restricted to one ethnic or religious group. It is our common suffering. There is a need to face and address the trauma our communities, especially women, have suffered this year," asserts Anyango, explaining her group's mandate.

The group first came together in the midst of troubles in Kibera after last year's elections. So far, other than providing medical help and psychological counselling to women caught in the election violence, the group has worked on engaging these marginalised women in social activities to develop a sense of community.

Anyango disagrees with the suggestion that development NGOs have not achieved anything substantial. "As the government provides virtually no public service, where would we be without the medical care, HIV control programmes, education and other essential projects run by the NGOs? The very fact that there is space for women like us to organise ourselves and to be able to work for promotion of peace is possible because of the years of effort put in by development workers from abroad and locally."

Testud of COPE also believes that given the limited capacity of NGOs and community groups, and in the changed political landscape of the country, the government can no longer continue to ignore the condition of the people of Kibera. Linking up with the government and advocating the rights of slum dwellers is therefore a core COPE mandate.

"Everyone acknowledges that Kibera needs social housing, water, sanitation and basic health services. Hundreds of NGOs and charities have been working on these issues for decades. Why no sustainable results could be achieved is because the issue is essentially political. If anyone can take on these powerful, politically connected vested interests, it has to be the political leadership of the country," says Caroline Testud.

"With the return of peace, there's been a gradual rise in expectations. Excuses for political failure are running out," she says.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Aug 14 2008 (IPS)

Conventional wisdom holds that a shortage of affordable and reliable energy is a key factor in perpetuating low levels of development in countries like Kenya. But the country's chief energy regulator argues that Kenya has all the power it needs, and growth in generation need not precede growth in demand.

"If you ask me if there's an electricity crunch in Kenya, I'd say there is and there isn't," says Hindpal Singh Jabbal, chair of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) of Kenya. "We are just about meeting our current electricity demand. There are no power cuts, no load-shedding as such. The gap between demand and supply is negligible.

"But in terms of financing and covering the cost of electricity generation, it is not only Kenya but also Tanzania and Uganda that are facing a crunch," says the ERC chief. Jabbal identifies dependence on the falling capacity of hydroelectric plants as one of the main limits on power generation.

A few years ago, 80 percent of Kenya's power came from hydro sources. That share is now down to 45 percent with geo-thermal providing 15 percent and plants burning one or another kind of petroleum-based fuel making up the remaining 40 percent. Demand for electricity is increasing by about seven percent annually, though more than 80 percent of the country's rural population have no electricity.

In the next four years, Jabbal says, Kenya will phase out its more expensive emergency thermal plants – emergency power plants running on diesel and gas-turbines using kerosene oil – and rely on heavy-fuel plants and geothermal to provide the additional 70 to 80 megawatts required every year.

"Geo-thermal energy is the future," observes Jabbal. "We have no coal so far, no gas and no oil. The Rift Valley is rich in geo-thermal energy and in time a bigger chunk of the country's power will come from this source."

He acknowledges there are negative environmental effects of exploiting this resource, but holds that these are offset by the fact that geo-thermal power is carbon-free. "Its adverse impact on agriculture is well known but, fortunately, Kenya's geothermal plants will be located in semi-desert areas of the valley where there is no farming land to be affected.

"We don't fully know the potential of our geothermal sources. It could be anywhere between 2000 to 7000 megawatts. But it is the way forward for Kenya."

Not all energy experts share Jabbal's optimism. Most of them believe that economic growth is dependent on an adequate energy supply and that Kenya is struggling on this front.

Abdi Awale, a former World Bank consultant, says that "Kenya will have to start thinking out of the box and tap unconventional sources of energy to speed up its economic growth."

He also points out that most of rural Kenya is not electrified and therefore the official claim of meeting the current demand is only half true.

"The urban-rural disparity is glaring. The country may be meeting its industrial and urban energy demands, but that covers only 15-20 percent of the population. In the rural areas, people still consume charcoal and wood, which makes up about 80 percent of all energy used in the country," says Awale, who thinks that more energy would translate into higher economic growth.

"At about 1100 MW, the current supply cannot industrialize Kenya nor drive it to achieve its development goals fast enough," says Awale.

However, the ERC chief turns this equation on its head. "It is usually growth in the economy which drives the demand for electricity and energy, and not the other way around as is generally believed," argues Jabbal. "Electricity is only one ingredient in the cost of production. The other ingredients are capital, markets for the goods produced and an enabling environment, raw materials and technology, and lastly the energy input."

He notes that the electricity bill of an average industry is not more than six to seven percent of the total cost of production and that despite high energy costs, Kenya is the biggest exporter in East Africa and its economy has grown by 6 percent over the last four years.

"Above all, the absolutely essential ingredient of economic production is the people and their working culture. The real force behind industrial and economic growth is the people. We need our own people to run and manage industry ourselves," Jabbal argues, saying that cultural traits, scarcity of human resources, and the pattern of population distribution pose hurdles for further growth.

Nishit Shah, an electrical engineer with a Nairobi-based power transmission firm, says that the problem of electrification in the rural areas is not merely a matter of generating more power.

"The cost of transmission and distribution to Kenya's rural areas is also prohibitive. Villages here are not compact residential areas. Houses and people are scattered on farms of varying sizes and there is no village system," says Shah.

Where would the money to finance future projects come from? The ERC chief says that like most of the developing world, his country has developed a dependency-syndrome with donor agencies. "Though we'll have to keep looking to donor agencies like the World Bank for financing, the problem will not go away unless Kenya becomes self-reliant, promotes a culture of local investment, and develops and exploits its own resources."

Greater cooperation with other countries in the Horn and East Africa is also becoming inevitable. Kenya, the ERC chief says, will 'interconnect' with Ethiopia and will be getting 450-500 MW from its neighbour by year 2014. Similar arrangements with Tanzania are also being negotiated.

"Energy is our mutual, regional problem. And it is going to force more regional cooperation among East African countries. We have to learn to solve our problems on our own."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Aug 4 2008 (IPS)

Since January, a group of politically-conscious poets, writers and storytellers in Kenya has been writing an alternative account of the violence that shook Kenya during the first two months of the year. Their work is now part of the evidence before the Waki Commission inquiring into post-election violence in Kenya.

Among the testimonies being reviewed by the Waki commission is a compilation of stories – ranging from journalistic reports to impressionistic writing – produced by Concerned Kenyan Writers (CKW), a group that came together in response to the violence that flared up after the disputed polls of December 27, 2007.

“When the world media was portraying Kenya as a country engulfed by ethnic hatred and mass violence, there were many people in all walks of society whose first thought was what can we do to help in this crisis,” says Shalini Gidoomal, director of the Kwani Trust, a Nairobi-based collective of writers and artists.

“We, as writers, could not have escaped that question. We had to do something and the only skill we could use to help our people was to write.”

And write they did. More than 160 news and analytical reports as well as poems and short stories have so far been produced and published worldwide by this group. Other than engaging well known Kenyan writers, the CKW also trained cub journalists to report on the crisis from Kenya’s perspective.

Some of the stories and poems produced by CKW have also been submitted to the Ministry of Education for inclusion in school curricula.

The CKW got its start as part of daily public meetings held by the Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP) at different venues in Nairobi including the offices of and other civil society organisations. Led by former diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat, the CCP soon became an umbrella organisation fostering and facilitating peace initiatives by other Kenyan individuals and groups like CKW.

“Inaccurate reporting by the international media, telling the typical Dark Continent stories, warranted a corrective response from Kenyan writers. We were not journalists but we could adapt our skills to respond to what we found to be ill-informed, stereotypical and misleading coverage of the violence by reporters who barely knew the country and its people,” Shalini tells IPS.

“We were the first anywhere to wade into the thick of analysis and discussion during the conflict at a time when sensational, dehumanising images were conveying a simplistic story of barbarism to the world.”

One of the first images to catch the world’s attention was that of a man being hacked by a machete as he tried in vain to escape. The outraged writers’ group sent protest letters asking Sky News to stop airing it.

“The western media never show the mutilated, blood-soaked bodies of the victims of terrorist attacks of, say September 11 or of the 2005 London bombings. Why take a different approach to Kenya’s tragedy?” asks Shalini.

Lost in the prefabricated ethnic-tribal storyline were the real events and their complex causes. For example, No foreign media noticed that among the first wave of rioters were the thousands of Kalenjin youth who had just completed their rite of passage into adulthood in the circumcision camps in Eldoret, Western Kenya.

Equipped with a new sense of power and male identity, thousands of Kalenjin youth went on a rampaging march through western towns up to Nakuru in Rift Valley, burning farms and houses belonging the ‘outsiders’ living on ‘their’ land.

“These sociological and psychological factors were beyond the grasp of the international media which focused on the sensational and the stereotypical,” says Shalini, who believes that the rising numbers of unemployed, unskilled and frustrated male youth continue to pose a threat to the traumatised peace in society.

Dipesh Pabari, editor of Wajibu, a journal focusing on issues of social and ethical concern, believes that the initial reporting also missed the stories of courage and compassion by hundreds of common Kenyans, the wananchi, who came forward to help the victims irrespective of tribal and political affiliations.

One of them, a young man of 23, set up an SMS hotline, without any support from anyone. He received hundreds of distress messages every day, from people telling of their ordeal and wanting help, and from people who wanted to help them.

“There was a forest warder who risked his life by taking in 847 refugees at the height of the violence. There were young men in our secondary schools that took the courage to speak up to student bodies and made them change their behaviour, turning prejudices into acceptance when fear and hatred was all around. There were our women who went to pay silent flower tributes to the dead and on the way encouraged members of the security forces to do the same.

“All these stories have one thing in common: the people who cared looked beyond tribe and race and saw the common humanity of people in need,” says Dipesh, whose journal’s latest issue is devoted exclusively to the work produced the concerned writers and poets, telling some of the untold stories.

The work of the Concerned Kenyan Writers of Kenya is far from over. The Kwani Trust, which facilitates production and distribution of Kenyan literature, launched a two-week literary festival on August 1, inviting luminaries from across Africa to reflect on the recent past and on the way forward. The theme of the festival is “Re-visioning Kenya”.

“Let us not fool ourselves. Drastic and painful changes, both in policy and attitudes, are needed if we are to actually experience this new Kenya. There is a still a long way to go,” concludes Pabari, who believes that “when, where and how the (displaced survivors of the violence) are resettled will be the litmus test of our resolve to build a new Kenya.”

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Aug 2 2008 (IPS)

There are increasing numbers of single mothers in Kenya. Is it a sign of growing independence of women, or a consequence of poverty and lack of sexual education?

Angelina Nandwa, the founder of the Single Mothers' Association of Kenya (Smak), says both are true. "The phenomenon is universal and pervasive in Kenya. It is not confined to one class, age-group or region. The causes as well as the consequences of being a single mother vary."

Nandwa set up Smak in 1991 to help single mothers. She herself was forced by her parents into marriage with a man 30 years her senior who she had never seen before. After four years and two children, she decided it was not the life she wanted to live.

"Kenyan parents do not accept daughters back in their home once they are married. My mother told me to go back to my husband and persevere as she had done with my father. But I wanted to take control of my life, even if that meant raising the children myself in hardship," Nandwa told IPS about the motivation behind her work.

"I was pregnant when I became single and went to the Family Planning Association for advice and help. Soon, I joined them and was then selected by a German organisation for a course in Berlin to become a trainer of community workers myself," Nandwa recalls.

Unlike most single mothers in Kenya, Nandwa is an educated, urban woman. After she got a German Development Foundation scholarship for training in community development, she returned to set up her own organisation. Now Smak has hundreds of clients who are provided help according to their need.

Ruth Njeri, a 20-year old domestic worker, is one of them. She had to leave school after getting pregnant and then moved to Nairobi from her village in the Nakuru district in search of work as her father refused to support her or the baby.

"I had completed my Form-IV (higher secondary) but after the child was born neither my family nor my school wanted me back. If I had wanted to study further at all, I had to go to a different school," Ruth recalls. But the decision was not hers anymore, she says, as the child needed her. "I did not want the child after my boyfriend left me because he himself was still in school. But as a mother I could not abandon him."

Nandwa says no one has collected statistics on single mothers. But there is data that points to their growing numbers. The Nairobi-based Centre for the Study of Adolescence estimates that up to 13,000 Kenyan girls drop out of school every year as a result of pregnancy. These young girls are often treated as outcasts by their families. Many migrate to cities where they face unemployment, health risks and malnutrition.

As a network of women's rights NGOs in Kenya gains strength, the presence of single mothers as a significant group in society is being recognised, says Nandwa. "We have worked with mothers as young as 13 and widows as old as 40 years old. Their needs are different from each other and it takes a network of women's groups to address them.

"Our financial and human resources are too small and the magnitude of the problem is too big. The best we can do is to pool our strengths through networking," says Nandwa.

Health and education of young mothers are two key areas of such networking. As the main provider of health services, government hospitals work in partnership with women's organisations. Dr Rupal Maru of the Kenyatta National Hospital, which receives cases of teenage pregnancy referred by organisations like Smak, says early motherhood entails more than just medical complications.

"Unmarried girls who become pregnant face three alternatives. She may marry the father; if she is in school, she most likely will drop out. The marriage as well as the pregnancy may be unwanted and soon result in divorce or abandonment, often experiencing societal disapproval and economic hardship. Or she may have an abortion, typically illegal and unsafe."

If girls go through with the pregnancy, says Dr Maru, the risk of complications or of dying in childbirth are much greater than if she had delayed childbearing until physically mature.

Those who survive face livelihood issues. Nandwa stresses the importance of schooling and vocational training for young, outcast mothers. There are numerous projects, such as the Smak's programme of informal schools, which provide opportunities for alternative education to girls who have been expelled.

"Schools in the formal system prefer not to readmit those who get pregnant while studying even though there is no law barring them," says Nandwa. "Above all, young mothers become adults directly after childhood without the intervening phase of adolescence."

A unique aspect of her organisation, Nandwa says, is that in addition to their work with young mothers they focus on what she calls 'baby fathers'. She points out that there is a lopsided focus in the government as well as on the part of international donors on girl-specific initiatives.

"Male sexual education, awareness and employment skills are equally important. If we are to address the problem of teenage pregnancy and single mothers, boys will have to be given as much attention as the girls. Sadly, all the national and international funding is for girls-focused programme. Boys are being left out and it is showing negative results already," says Nandwa, who thinks male youth are under more pressure and receive little attention for their problems.

She disagrees with this agenda. "The problem of single mothers, street children, prostitution and HIV/AIDS cannot be addressed in isolation from the male component of society. We'll have to engage vulnerable people on both sides of the gender divide."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jul 25 2008 (IPS)

By December this year, aid agencies estimate that the number of displaced and hungry people in need of life-saving aid in Somalia will swell to 3.5 million—nearly half the country’s population. Yet, as drought and conflict conspire to worsen the crisis, the humanitarian space to deliver food and other essential assistance in this conflict zone has all but vanished.

“At sea, ships carrying aid face the threat of piracy, on land (aid workers face) armed robbery and kidnapping,” says Abdullahi Musse, a Somali worker for an international humanitarian organisation. “Then, in the process of reaching our warehouses as well as on their way to the beneficiaries, the trucks cannot move without security escorts and have to pass through countless checkpoints which cannot be crossed without paying a ‘fee’ to a variety of armed groups.

“It is a high-risk activity with minimal guarantees of security,” says Musse.

Over the past few months, even this has become almost impossible to do. This year alone 20 aid workers, including foreigners, have been killed. Seventeen aid workers were freed after being kidnapped for ransom while 13 more are still in captivity.

All international aid workers and UN staff have been forced out by continuous fighting between Islamic insurgent groups and forces of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) backed by Ethiopian troops. Both sides accuse each other of attacks on aid workers and vow to protect them. Added to this are professional kidnapping rings, which have been encouraged by the large ransoms paid by foreigners to release ships taken by pirates.

The UN agencies and nine international organisations still maintain a presence in Mogadishu, but they rely exclusively on local staff. Musse told IPS over the phone from Mogadishu that Somali workers, too, are now being targeted and aid delivery has completely stalled.

There are 250 informal settlements of displaced people in Mogadishu and over 200 more along the road in Afogye. The UN says that as of June, 857,000 people had been displaced from Mogadishu and are reliant on international aid. Other agricultural regions in south-central Somalia, the main theatre of conflict, have been without rain this season and food shortage is acute.

“One of the reasons why many people had fled Mogadishu and set up camps in Afgoye (45 kilometres from the capital) was that it was more accessible for aid workers than the city itself,” he says. “Many families split to get the aid they couldn’t in Mogadishu. For the last two weeks people in the Afgoye corridor settlements have also been protesting in frustration over lack of aid delivery.”

If sufficient food and other humanitarian assistance cannot be scaled up in the coming months, Oxfam International sees a severe famine in the making: “Should these conditions continue and aid agencies are not able to deliver adequate assistance, then the situation could tip over into famine in several regions of Somalia later in the year.”

In his speech at the Security Council on July 23, the secretary-general’s special representative for Somalia, Ahmed Ould-Abdalla, urged international naval escorts for WFP’s aid-carrying ships and more security for aid workers.

“I sympathise with Somali nationals who constitute more than 95 percent of aid workers in south and central Somalia. They risk their lives daily and all too often have been the innocent victims of targeted killings,” Abdalla told the Security Council Wednesday.

Political Impasse

Unfortunately, this sense of urgency in the humanitarian sector is not matched by developments on the political front. With the help of Ethiopian forces, the TFG controls a few towns in south-central region while an assortment of Islamic groups remain in ascendancy in most of the territory. (The Puntland and Somaliland regions in north and north-western Somalia claim autonomous status.)

The UN-brokered peace agreement in Djibouti between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and leaders of the Union of Islamic Court has split the UIC. Radical Islamic factions reject the deal and increased attacks in south-central regions.

The Islamic courts are now divided into two main groups: the Djibouti group headed by Sheikh Sharif and signatory to the peace deal with TFG, and the Asmara group based in Eritrea and led by Hasan Dahir Aweys, an Afghan war veteran who is now wanted by the United States on terrorism charges for his alleged links with al-Qaeda.

“It is difficult to say how much control these two have over Al-Shabab, a group which is also on the U.S. terror list, and other insurgent groups of ‘mujaheddin’ (holy warriors) that have waged a war to throw out the Ethiopian forces from Somalia,” says Bashir Awale, a radio journalist based in Mogadishu. Bashir says many previously unknown groups with Islamic names have recently issued threats against humanitarian workers. “But the TFG forces are equally culpable of deterring aid,” says Bashir who points to the fact that there are four TFG checkpoints within a few kilometres drive to from Mogadishu to Afgoye and dozens more within the city.

Given the volatile and complex nature of the conflict, the UN special representative is seeking an international peacekeeping force to stabilise the country and provide cover to humanitarian operations. Ould-Abdalla believes that in “the current favourable political context following the Djibouti Agreement, it is time for the Security Council to take bold, decisive and fast action.”

However, when asked if the United States would lead a coalition of countries into Somalia to implement the peace deal, US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said: “Well, you know that we are quite busy as you know, number one. Number two, that there are always issues with the U.S. leading a coalition…”

Blaming al-Qaeda related groups for the attacks on humanitarian workers, Khalilzad did not agree to prompt Security Council action. He said no plan for a peacekeeping force will be discussed before August 15, when the Security Council Secretariat is expected to present a future plan for Somalia. A peacekeeping force with a strong mandate could take months.

“Somalia remains the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers,” says Abdullahi Musse, “and yet its people are most desperate for humanitarian assistance. Resolving this dilemma requires impartial and immediate international intervention and it is needed today.”

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jul 18 2008 (IPS)

The indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on 10 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide has greatly encouraged some Darfuri human rights activists. Other observers in Sudan fear it will provoke a backlash from the government, further worsening the situation in Darfur.

As the permanent members of the UN Security Council remain deeply divided on what, if any, action should be taken against the Sudanese president, Bashir is unlikely to face trial in the near future.

"We do not know what will happen next. But for the survivors of Darfur, the process initiated by the International Criminal Court is of immense significance in itself," says Salih Osman Mohammed, a member of the Sudanese parliament and a human rights lawyer.

He argues that against the backdrop of years of surviving in a state of utter helplessness and international neglect, Bashir's public indictment is a source of support for the Darfuris. "The parliament is dominated by Bashir's men; the judiciary is incompetent and not able to provide justice; the international community has for long turned a blind eye to Darfur. What other avenue do the people of Darfur have?" asks Salih.

"It may fail (to arrest and bring President Bashir to trial), but the fact that the international community recognises the suffering of the people of Darfur and is willing to go after those responsible for it means a lot to them, it makes them feel they have an ally somewhere in the world, who is willing to listen to their voice and support them," says Salih, winner of the 2007 Sakharov Prize, the European Union's top rights award, for his work to defend the rights of the Fur people.

He says Bashir is now a marked man, named and shamed for his crimes, as well as subject to travel and diplomatic restrictions and the threat of an impending trial under the Rome Statutes, signed by 106 countries.

"The sense of impunity he has had so far is gone. For the people in the camps it is sufficient to know that someone is identifying those responsible for the crimes against them," asserts Salih.

A 2004 United Nations fact-finding mission described Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The Security Council referred the case to ICC in March 2004. The prosecuting team had to work in a highly volatile and complex situation.

The Sudan is a vast country of 35 million, with the north and west of the country predominantly Muslim. (South Sudan is heavily Christian and was the theatre of a previous civil war before the Darfur crisis set in.) The faultline within the Muslim population, between those of Arab origin and black African Muslims, has been volatile for a long time. The three non-Arab groups – Massalit, Zaghawa and Fur – are mainly settled farming communities whereas the Arabs in Darfur are traditionally cattle-rearing nomads.

The former have complained of marginalisation and neglect by Khartoum for decades. Regular Arab-African conflicts over land and water escalated into a general uprising in 2003 and the government responded by sending in horse-riding militiamen called Janjaweed who have turned the vast desert region near Sudan's border with Chad into a killing field. More than 400,000 Fur, Massalit and other non-Arab ethnic groups have been killed and 2.5 million displaced over the last five years.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, notes in his case against Bashir that the people of Darfur were challenging the marginalization of the province; they engaged in a rebellion. When Bashir failed to defeat the armed movements, he went after the people.

"His motives were largely political. His alibi was a 'counterinsurgency.' His intent was genocide," the prosecutor said.

But the ICC's history of pursuing war criminals in Sudan does not inspire confidence. The court has already charged two relatively minor Sudanese officials for war crimes in Darfur. Ahmed Haroon, who was the interior minister when the conflict first erupted, has been charged with coordinating attacks in 2003-2004. Following his indictment, Haroon was appointed by President Bashir to the post of the minister of humanitarian affairs, responsible for the people in the camps in Darfur.

"So, he's in charge of the same victims he displaced and he's attacking these people in the camps," ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the media in June after filing charges against Haroon and Ali Kushayb, a commander of Janjaweed before he was appointed a commander in the Popular Defense Force (PDF), the reserve force of the Sudanese Armed Forces. The ICC, however, depends on cooperation from national governments to arrest indicted criminals. Both men remain free but largely confined to the Sudan.

The prosecutor has now gone a step further and charged the president, who is also the commander-in-chief of the army.

Only France and Britain among the Security Council veto powers unequivocally support the ICC decision. The United States, which has designated the Arab-dominated Sudanese government's actions against the Fur and other African tribes in Darfur as genocide, remains reluctant to pursue a Security Council resolution for an arrest warrant as it does not recognise ICC and is not a signatory to the Rome Statutes.

China, also not a signatory and with huge economic stakes in the Sudan as the largest buyer of its oil, also opposes further action. In fact, it is seeking a UN vote to stop court proceedings against Bashir.

The United Nations itself is more worried about the safety of its peacekeeping and humanitarian operations after seven UN troops were killed in an ambush last week. Both the Arab League and the African Union (AU) have also refused to support the ICC decision against one of their members. Pro-government demonstrations in Khartoum called the ICC charges a joke.

Salih, however, does not agree that the court's decision will undermine its credibility or that with suggestions it should have opted for a sealed indictment to avoid a diplomatic row. "The indictment should be viewed separately from the politics and diplomacy that has followed. The ICC is an independent body. The prosecutor has gathered evidence after three years of painstaking effort. By filing the charges and making them public he has done his job."

Threat to peace?

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which for 21 years waged a civil war in the country's Christian-dominated southern region before signing the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) and joining Bashir's government of national unity in 2005, urges caution.

"We need to have a clear roadmap on how to resolve the Darfur crisis," Yassir Arman, a spokesman of the SPLM, told IPS. The SPLM urges more cooperation with the international community to resolve the Darfur crisis rather than further pursuing the ICC case aggressively.

"There is a need for the government of national unity to reach an understanding with the international community and cooperate on the legal aspects of the ICC warrants," says Arman.

He also feels that the key for stability in the Sudan is to continue the implementation of the CPA and other agreements. "It is a serious situation and it could threaten the peace and stability if it is not well-managed…the main issue is to put a quick and fair end to the Darfur crisis."

Salih, however, points out that President Bashir has never attended any Darfur peace talks, the peace process has gone nowhere and this indictment will help the international community to put more pressure on him. "There may be more room for compromise now. By publicly listing his crimes and nominating him for trial, the ICC has brought the focus on Bashir. It is time for the international community to respond now."

It would indeed be another tragedy if, amid the polarising furor caused by the ICC's action, the people of Darfur were to again become victims of misdirected political and diplomatic priorities. The ICC rhetoric of "No peace without justice," if not backed by the political will of the big powers, may end up jeopardising both.

*with additional reporting from Skye Wheeler in Juba

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jul 15 2008 (IPS)

No sooner did Kenya's Commission of Inquiry into Post-election Violence begin public hearings last week than it was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand.

Beyond the sheer scale of the violence – more than a thousand people killed and 350,000 displaced in two months of turmoil sparked by electoral disputes – the commission's job is further complicated by its resolve to address the large number of sexual crimes committed during the violent crisis.

At its maiden hearing on July 9 the chairman of the Commission, Justice Philip Waki, told journalists at the Kenyatta Conference Centre that one of the core mandates of the commission is to investigate sexual offences which he described as "silent crimes in conflict situations… much ignored and underreported."

He said it was not possible for the commission to complete the task within the time stated in their terms of reference, which ends on August 22. The commission has requested an extension of tenure.

Investigating sexual crimes in normal times is difficult enough; sifting evidence and collecting stories from the rubble of ethnic violence and riots will be one of the biggest challenges facing the Waki Commission.

The five-member commission, constituted on May 23 and sworn in on June 3, is one of three bodies probing the post-election crisis (the other two, also formed as part of the national peace accord brokered by former UN chief Kofi Annan at the end of February are the Independent Review Committee headed by South African Justice Kriegler and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission).

The Waki commission took a month to lay down its rules of conduct, outline its mandate and now begin public hearings. It will document as many cases of violence as it can and recommend legal and administrative measures to address the causes and bring the perpetrators and planners of the violence to justice.

However, as Kenya tries to come to terms with its recent past, the scale and scope of sexual offences during the few months of madness after the December 2007 elections may never be fully documented. Local media reported about 600 cases of rape in Nairobi alone after the cities' slums were engulfed in ethnic riots for two months after the elections.

According to Teresa Omondi of the Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC) in the Nairobi Women's Hospital, a nongovernmental charitable organization, only a fraction of cases have been reported in the media and registered by police, and even fewer will ever make it to a court of law.

GVRC has compiled a report on the extent and types of post-election sexual crimes, which documents 653 cases with evidence gathered by 450 volunteer counselors in hospital, camps and communities in eight cities. Every survivor has a harrowing story of abuse and humiliation to tell.

The offences range from rape, domestic violence in violence-hit communities and in IDP camps, and physical and sexual assaults in the first three months of 2008. Other than the 653 who received medical attention and psychological counselling at GVRC, the centre also reached a total of 2812 survivors in camps.

The GVRC report, coupled with a follow-up on the documented cases due to be released next week, will be submitted to the Waki Commission.

Omondi qualifies these numbers by saying that most of these people were either reached by the centre or referred to it by police or other hospitals after the elections; many more must have suffered in silence without having access to any medical or psychological help or even the opportunity to report the crime to police. The fact that displacement and rioting prevented many survivors from contacting either the police or hospitals also suggests that more sexual crimes remain hidden than have been recorded or registered.

"During the eviction campaigns after the election dispute, threat of rape was usually the first warning and then it was used to humiliate rival communities and to force them to leave," says Omondi whose team has documented cases in camps in Mombasa, Eldoret, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu, Naivasha, Nairobi and their environs.

Rape and other forms of sexual assault were used as a "weapon of ethnic and political violence" even before the elections, observes Omindi. Hundreds, if not thousands, will remain traumatised by their experiences.

Both men and women were subjected to sexual humiliation and Omondi says that the psychological and physical consequences are equally dangerous in both cases. "There is no one-time remedy for these victims. Recovery and rehabilitation, if at all, requires a combination of medical treatments and psychological therapies." she says. "The GVRC still receives patients suffering from trauma, physical disabilities or pregnancies as a result of the election-related violence.

Crime without remedy

Physical wounds and scars may disappear, says Omondi, but the stigma of losing one's dignity stays on. The emotional trauma, risk of sexually transmitted diseases and, in many cases, the complication of pregnancy destroy lives forever.

"The stigma attached to rape victims ostracizes them socially and often leads to divorce and excommunication from the community," says Omondi explaining why few people come forward to report these cases to police.

Other than those who approach the GVRC directly, the centre receives survivors of sexual assaults from other hospitals in Nairobi and elsewhere in the country as it provides free laboratory tests for HIV/AIDS, high vaginal swab, hepatitis, pregnancy, syphilis, urinalysis, haemogram, and liver malfunction. The centre also prescribes drugs and conducts therapies.

But encouraging people to seek legal redress has proved much harder. "Although the centre works with a number of lawyers groups to help the victims get legal aid, only 20 of the 653 victims medically managed and counselled by the centre have decided to seek legal remedy."

The Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) in Nairobi received four cases referred by GVRC. However, a lawyer at Fida told IPS that given the lapse of time and stringent requirements of law, cases of sexual assaults rarely go beyond preliminary stages of investigations. Those that do reach the prosecution stage can remain in judicial proceedings for years.

"Embarrassment is the biggest reason why most victims do not want to take the legal recourse. But there are other realities as well: the identity of the attackers is unknown in most cases; evidence is hard to collect and it is even harder to prove a case in court," says Hillary Mutehui, noting that there is only one DNA testing facility in Kenya and even this lab relies on another in South Africa for its final results.

The lack of testing facilities is compounded by the police attitude and judicial capacity. The GVRC has a close working relationship with the police and Omondi notes an improvement in attitude towards sexual crimes as many of the victims who had reported to police first were referred to the centre for treatment and counselling. But she observes that much more needs to be done to sensitize the force to the gravity of such offences.

GVRC workers recorded statements of many victims in Rift valley towns who, when they went to report a rape, were told by police they should be relieved to be alive and were advised not to pursue cases as it would be a waste of time.

Omondi also points to the capacity of the judiciary which, compared with the number of cases, is quite limited. "It is not that the laws are not there to deal with sexual offences but it is the implementation of those laws and prosecution that has proved difficult," she says.

The amnesty ruse

While most individual cases of rape and assault may remain unreported and therefore without legal redress, the Waki commission seems determined to identify and pursue the planners of the post-election violence.

The head of the Commission of Inquiry into Post-election Violence has dismissed the debate on amnesty for those responsible for inciting and unleashing the wave of ethnic. Members of the two principal parties in the grand coalition, President Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Prime Minister Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), have taken up divergent positions on the question of amnesty.

ODM leaders argue that the people currently in jail are the small fry, the pawns in a larger game, and that the police and security services have questions to answer too. The PNU wants to prosecute those already under arrest, even as it may mean holding people without charge or for extended period of times without hearings.

However, the commission wants this debate to end. A press release issued last week by the commission's secretary, George Kegoro, said in addition to making recommendations on measures to prevent a repetition of the electoral violence, they probe intends to bring those responsible for criminal acts to justice and to eradicate impunity.

"In doing so, we shall keep a balance between all the legitimate interests that this (amnesty) debate represents, while helping the country to move forward on the basis of stability and justice," said Justice Waki whose team includes commissioners Gavin Alistair McFadden from New Zealand, Pascal Kalume Kambale from the Democratic Republic of Congo, chief of the Kenya chapter of International Commission of Jurists George Kegoro, and human rights lawyer David Majanja.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has also voiced its concern over the debate on amnesty in Kenya. A policy brief published last month states that "crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, torture, and sexual violence should not be amnestied. Justice is for both the victims and the accused."

Kenya has had its fair share of probe commissions and tribunals over the years with little or no results. For instance, the Akiwumi Commission of Inquiry constituted in 1998 to probe the election violence of 1992 remained controversial. It came six years after the event and it took the commission another year to compile findings which were quickly disputed by civil society organisations.

The Waki Commission, on the other hand, is working under a different, internationally-sanctioned mandate and at a time when Kenya's political culture is changing. It has also got the support of citizens' groups and non-governmental organisations.

"Even if justice is not done in most cases, it will be an achievement for official bodies like the Waki Commission and private charities like GVRC if our work made the country question its mindset of looking down upon sex-crime victims.

"Above all, we need to educate people to change family and community attitudes towards sexual crimes. Branding victims with stigma and urging silence to avoid humiliation and police and courts is the biggest hurdle in controlling and countering gender-based violence," concludes Omondi.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jul 8 2008 (IPS)

Two days after publicly vowing to die rather than resign, Kenya's powerful finance minister, Amos Kimunya, announced he was resigning to allow an independent investigation of corruption charges against him.

The minister's resignation came a week after Kenya's parliament passed a censure motion against Kimunya. The censure, a first in the country's history, was prompted by the report of a committee headed by Attorney General Amos Wako, which had questioned the role of the finance minister in the sale of Grand Regency, a publicly-owned five-star hotel in central Nairobi.

At about the same time, police beat and arrested a group of about two dozens human rights activists who were marching towards the parliament building to protest Kimunya's stubborn refusal to quit despite pressure from hundreds of civil society organisations and an almost unanimous censure by members of parliament. Those arrested belonged to the Name and Shame Coalition Against Corruption, a group of NGOs, lawyers and citizens, who have led the campaign against Kimunya.

At a brief press conference, the minister – a close ally of President Mwai Kibaki – said his conscience was clear and he was stepping aside only to let the investigation take its course. However, he obliquely admitted that he was forced out when he said that the decision was taken after "several consultations with President Kibaki" as well as his family and friends.

"This has never happened before," Dr Ekuru Aukot, a prominent human rights lawyer and head of Kitua Cha Sheria (Legal Advice Centre), said in an interview with IPS. "It's very significant because now it is possible to call ministers of cabinet to account and impeach them."

Dr Aukot's organisation is one of around 300 civil society groups that launched a sustained campaign following the sale of the hotel in May to uncover the shady hotel deal and expose massive high-level corruption in the Kenyan government.

The Attorney General's committee had also recommended that the head of the Central Bank of Kenya and the chief of the National Security Intelligence Service step aside to ensure a free and impartial inquiry into the hotel sale which Kimunya had claimed was sold to a Libyan investment company for $45 million.

The Libyan embassy swiftly distanced itself from the deal and Kimunya's fellow cabinet ministers also challenged his story.

The minister for land, James Orengo, a member of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) which governs as part of the grand coalition formed with President Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU), provided the media with documents relating to the hotel transfer which indicated that it had actually fetched $28 million, far less than Kimunya had reported. Orengo also challenged the identity of the buyer and said the hotel was not sold to Libyan investors but to a Kenyan company whose owners' names are missing from the transfer documents.

The sacked minister repeatedly argued that the bid to oust him was politically motivated by his rivals in the Orange Democratic Movement. In his last few statements before quitting, Kimunya accused Prime Minister Raila Odinga of fomenting the crisis.

A matter of rights

Corruption, especially when committed on grand scale, is a human rights issue, says Dr Aukot. "When state resources are diverted away from public services and people are deprived of basic amenities because the government has no money, grand corruption becomes a direct abuse of human rights of the people of Kenya," Aukot observes, explaining why lawyers' groups, human rights campaigners and women organisations chose to pursue this case.

"Our aim is to bring the notion of rule of law in our society. The hotel deal violated numerous laws of the land and could not have been ignored. It is a small step towards attaining our democratic ideals," says Aukot.

He referred to the live telecast of the debate on the censure motion which gave Kenyans the opportunity to see and directly judge for themselves what their representatives were doing in parliament. "It was the voice of democracy," Aukot remarked who found the experience of watching the debate live ‘inspiring’.

Though the parliamentary censure did not carry any legal weight and was not binding on the president who is the appointing executive authority, the cumulative pressure of civil society and media exposure, the president was forced to act.

"The minister's censure showed that even when there is no official opposition—as is the case since the formation of the grand coalition—parliament can act as a check on cabinet ministers and other government officials," says Aukot.

Doubts persist about the viability of a coalition of parties as opposed to one another as PNU and ODM have been for the last year. As the Grand Regency case gained media attention and elicited public outcry, many expected polarisation in the coalition along party and ethnic lines – Mr Kimunya is a Kikuyu, as is President Kibaki. Even as the two main parties continue to indulge in sabre-rattling and proffer divergent policy positions on many key issues, minister and MPs from both sides spoke with one voice.

Dr Aukot observes: "On an issue of such magnitude and public interest the parliament showed unity. I can only speculate about their motives and I hope it is not because the minister had proposed a tax on their salaries. But the timing of this episode is critical. It's been 16 years since multiparty democracy was introduced in Kenya and this is the first time it has taken such a unanimous initiative. I take it as a sign of Kenyan democracy maturing."

Flora Terah of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy believes that the minister's resignation was overdue.

"He should have done that long ago for the sake of transparency and to pave the way for a proper, independent investigation. But he dragged other cabinet members into the controversy," Ms Terah said.

More severe examinations of the coalition's durability lie ahead. The two principal parties will have to resolve the question of amnesty for those arrested for violence after the 2007 election and draft a new constitution. But the grand coalition seems to have survived its first major test.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jul 8 2008 (IPS)

A new media law – six years in the making – has been passed by Ethiopia's House of People's Representatives. Its preamble declares that "the proclamation removes all obstacles that were impediments to the operation of the media in Ethiopia." But an analysis by Ethiopian journalists finds it actually clears the way for government to continue to harass and persecute the messenger when the message is not in line with the whims of the rulers.

The 'Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation', which purports to update and reform the first ever Ethiopian press law of 1992, has been a source of controversy ever since its initiation in 2002.

In countless meetings with the ministry of information – which regulates Ethiopian media – local and international activists have been lobbying in vain for revisions in the draft to make it compatible with international norms and conventions on press freedom. The version adopted by parliament last week seems certain to further restrict freedom of expression and intimidate journalists.

"We have come to understand… that the proclamation is incompatible with the (Ethiopian) constitution and other international human rights laws, conventions and agreements. It is a reversal and desecration of victories achieved by the repealed press law (of 2004)," says a resolution adopted Wednesday at the end of a UN-sponsored workshop of media practitioners in Addis Ababa organised by the Horn of Africa Press Institute (HAPI).

The workshop reviewed the new legislation and called for "a reassessment of all the provisions of the law" as it imposes "substantive restrictions with heavy burden and obligations" on journalists.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the new law is that the government has appropriated the right to prosecute defamation cases against the media even if the ostensibly defamed government officials do not initiate legal proceedings. Article 43 (7) of the proclamation says that defamation and false accusation against "constitutionally mandated legislators, executives and judiciaries will be a matter of the government and prosecutable even if the person against whom they were committed chooses not to press charge."

This provision overrides the 2004 criminal law which had stated that cases of defamation would go to court only when the victims make complaints. Also, the compensation for moral damage caused by mass media has been raised from 1,000 birr to a crippling 100,000 birr – just over $10,000.

Journalists attending the workshop also pointed out that many restrictive measures had already been incorporated into other laws during the six-year debate on the media bill. For instance, the Criminal Code of the country which came into force in 2005 includes penal provisions for "participation in crimes by the mass media."

In another example, the role and duties of the Ministry of Information were redefined in 2007 to give the government arbitrary powers to use registration and licensing procedures as a punishment for dissent. It also empowers the government to stop distribution of a newspaper if the attorney general deems a news item to be a criminal act.

And in a country where most of the established newspapers as well as radio and television channels are government-owned, the new law undermines the growth of the independent private sector by placing its fate in the hands of the information ministry.

"We understand that the regulatory authority itself is involved in the media and news making and has no institutional freedom," the workshop resolution observed.

Banned journalists

The new law fits into a pattern of official persecution of journalists seen over the last three years. Soon after controversial 2005 elections, three newspapers and magazines belonging to the country's largest private publisher, Serkalem Publishing House, were closed down as part of a widespread crackdown on media that dared to criticise the handling of the poll. Serkalem Fasil and her family were imprisoned for over a year.

Ten other independent publications were also forced to shut down, leaving hundreds of journalists unemployed.

Already this year, the government has forced two more magazines out of circulation using laws against disturbance to public order. One of them, Enku, a fashion magazine, was not only confiscated but its deputy editor, Aleymayehu Mahtemwork and three colleagues spent four days in jail for covering the trial of a popular pop star whose songs angered the government. Though he was released, the case against him remains pending and his magazine is yet to be revived.

Fasil recalls the recent history of media persecution by the state and observes and explains the apathy of the international community: "Much to the utter amazement of the of the Ethiopian public, the international community shrugged and moved on, perhaps writing off the democratic cause in Ethiopia as superfluous in light of the perceived danger posed by Islamic extremists in the Horn. Every single one of those papers is still closed, and almost all journalists that worked for them are either in exile or remain unemployed to this day."

She told IPS that a few months after her acquittal she applied for new press licenses as prescribed by the press law and the constitution. "And though we were assured by the Ministry of Information that we had fulfilled all legal requirements and are entitled to the licenses by law, we were advised to pursue the issue at the prime minister's office, which had extra-judicially interceded to block the applications. Ten months later, we are still patiently waiting for the application of rule of law."

"The provisions of better laws are desirable," she says, "but they will hardly matter if they are not binding and could be abrogated at will by government officials, as has been clearly established in our case."

Signs are that the government intends to widen the scope of its assault on people’s rights. The current session of parliament is also taking up a bill to regulate non-governmental and civil society organisations. The banned journalists, it seems, will soon have more allies to share their adversity and join their struggle.

Excerpt:

The Kenyan government says Operation Rudi Nyumbani – Return Home in Kiswahili – is almost complete; most of the camps for internally displaced people are closed and the remaining IDPs will be resettled within a week or two. But the hastily implemented programme is being called into question by Kenya’s civil society and human rights activists.

“Only a fraction of IDPs have returned,” says Prisca Kamungi of the Internal Displacement Policy and Advocacy Centre in Nairobi, “And those who have are not able to rebuild their homes or resume normal life as most of them are living in make-shift camps near their farms and the local communities remain hostile and unwelcoming.” (See Q&A: “How Not to Resettle IDPs”.)

Very few people have actually moved back to or been able to rebuild their homes. Instead, the returnees are living in tents they were given when they were moved from the camps, according to Kamungi. In official government jargon, these new clusters of tents, far from the public eye in rural areas, are called Satellite Camps. The U.N. designates them as Transit Camps.

At the peak of the violence, the United Nations Secretary General’s representative on IDPs estimated that there were between 350,000 and 500,000 internally displaced persons. In February 2008, more than 300,000 of them had been registered in 300 camps nationwide. But these statistics provide only a partial picture as it was also estimated by the U.N. that an equal number of IDPs were living with friends and family.

In May, the government decided that as envisaged in the national peace accord brokered by the former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, those living in camps across the Rift Valley and Nairobi should return home. The fact that the planting season begins in May and June was added impetus to resettle small farmers and farm workers before the growing season is lost.

The government has refused to pay any compensation – a source of resentment among the returning IDPs – but it has promised to provide other assistance such as provision of seeds and agricultural implements.

And while the demand for compensation and assistance money is souring government’s relations with IDP groups, in some areas like Sugoi in Uasin Gishu, the epicentre of clashes in Rift Valley, local communities are demanding amnesty for those arrested and charged with involvement in the violence that followed the disputed election as a prerequisite to resettlement.

Joyce Njeri, whose family has lived in a camp at the Eldoret Showground for two months, says her family was eager to return home despite the unwelcoming residents and conditions. “But as soon as they reached Sugoi, local youths drove them back saying there cannot be resettlement without amnesty.”

The Kibaki-led grand coalition remains divided on these two issues. Agriculture Minister William Ruto and other Orange Democratic Movement politicians from the Rift Valley are campaigning for amnesty, while the Party of National Unity of President Kibaki is opposed to the idea.

Monitors’ verdict

The United Nation’s assessment of Rudi Nyumbani observes that “most farmers with land went back voluntarily, and except for a few well-publicised instances, which were responded to by the government, returns were not coerced per se.”

Kenyan civil society has a more critical verdict. A report released on Jun. 24 by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) finds the government plan deeply flawed.

“While carrying out the resettlement exercise, (the) government has been flouting internationally accepted standards and thresholds that govern resettlement programs globally,” the report says. The commission, an independent body instituted by parliament in 2002, has done case studies of north, south and central parts of Rift Valley – the province worst hit by the violence – as well as Nairobi.

The commission concludes that, with the exception of a few areas, the “exercise has taken the form of…movement from bigger camps to smaller camps in areas near or adjacent to the farms of the displaced persons.”

“There are generally poor living conditions in the new/transitory camps…there is no basic sanitation and water facilties. Humanitarian organisations are now having a new challenge delivering supplies to the many small camps,” says the KNCHR assessment.

Though the report does not allege coerced or forced resettlement, the commissioners note that in some cases the displaced were “induced specifically by officers of the provincial administration” to leave the camps and go home. Those who have returned have not been given enough information on the situation back on the farms.

The commission’s observers also fault the government for pushing through the resettlement process even as “almost in all places visited by the team… no peace meetings were held between different communities ahead of the resettlement exercise. It appears that the government took the approach that peace initiatives will be carried out after the IDPs are settled back to their farms.”

Out of sight, out of mind

Prisca Kamungi of the IDPs Advocacy and Policy Centre says the statistics on IDP returns are exaggerated. She told IPS that the objective of the government’s policy is to clean up Kenya’s image by “pushing the displaced people off the radar.”

Far from signaling that reconciliation is taking place, the closure of the IDP camps is a cosmetic exercise.

“They want to show the world that after the national peace accord the country is back to ‘normal’. The effect of this policy is that rather than living in big camps, the displaced will be scattered around,” says Kamungi.

Ms Kamungi says that because of the international spotlight, the Kibaki government has taken a different approach to that taken by President Daniel Arap Moi’s government in the 1990s.

“In the 1990s, the government of President Moi was able to remove the camps and displaced people through violent means because Kenya was not in the limelight then. One of the consequences of that was more slums in urban areas. This government cannot adopt the same methods but its policy is equally ill-conceived and will bring the same results,” says Kamungi. “When does displacement end? Are those driven out of camps in 1995 and who had nowhere to go other than to the slums still displaced and in need of resettlement?”

The Kenya Human Rights Commission reported that about 300,000 people were displaced in election-related clashes in 1992. In the Rift Valley, the end of the elections was not followed by the return of the displaced to their former land. Rather, those who had camped at market, church and school compounds were violently dispersed.

“In 1994, the Maela camp near Naivasha was burnt to the ground; it had more than 10,000 IDPs from the Narok area,” says Kamungi. Public outcry and extensive media coverage and criticism led to the resettlement of 200 of them in an arid government-owned land near Maela, not to their former fertile lands.

“The others, considered ‘outsiders’, were put in government trucks and dumped at Ndaragwa, Kiriti stadium and Ol Kalau in central province, the ‘ancestral’ homeland of the Kikuyu. They were left stranded; not helped to settle in Central Province. Consequently, a large number of these landless, disenfranchised people found their way into shopping centres, the streets of Nairobi and slum areas.,” says Kamungi, who wrote a report for the Jesuit Refugee Service on the 1992 displacement.

The mode of resettlement has been slightly different in 2008, though the result is much similar.

Kamungi also noted that only those who have no other support system ended up in IDP camps in the first place. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people who had either family members in other areas with the means to support them or the money to establish themselves independently in a new location did not end up in camps. And most of these integrated internally displaced people, as they are known, are excluded from resettlement plans.

Kamungi believes that a comprehensive policy is required to address the long-standing problem of resettling the displaced people, who have been in focus this year only because the violence caught international attention.

Peter Karanja of the National Council of Churches in Kenya, has a different take on Operation Rudi Nyumbani. This exercise, he told IPS, “must be seen in light of the humanitarian situation the IDPs have been subjected to.

“They have been in camps for several months. Some have gone without adequate food, shelter and other basic amenities. The spread of HIV/AIDs has also been reported in the camps. Children were dying due to adverse weather condition,” says Karanja, whose organisation is one of the church groups that were the first to respond to the crisis.

He also notes that this is the planting season in most parts of the Rift Valley where the majority of the IDPs came from. Given the squalid conditions in the camps, he believes prompt resettlement will mitigate their suffering even “as politicians engage in endless controversy over when, how and by whom should the IDPs be settled.”

But Karanja objects to how resettlement has been handled. “The government moved virtually alone without involving other actors. Physical resettlement should have been accompanied by a deliberate and rigorous engagement in a broad process of peace building and reconciliation.”

That goal seems distant as even the major political groups within the government fail to speak with one voice. “Peace building amongst the politicians from both sides is a prerequisite as their conflicting statements are undermining and hindering the return to normalcy,” says Peter Karanja.

Joseph Macharia, who worked as an aid-delivery volunteer with an NGO in a camp in Naivasha, another lakeside Rift Valley town with IDP camps, says that like most other contentious issues the grand coalition is dealing with, the IDPs have become a political football to be kicked around. “The problem is being buried, not resolved. It will re-emerge even if Operation Rudi Nyumbani is officially declared a success and all the camps are closed.”

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jun 26 2008 (IPS)

The end of June marks the start of the malaria season in East Africa. After the long rains, conditions in lowland swamps and coastal regions are more conducive for mosquito breeding. But in recent years malaria has also appeared in the highland areas where it was previously unheard of.

Malaria has been so rare in Nairobi that doctors hardly ever suspect it when they see patients with symptoms of cold and fever. "When a friend of mine went down with fever a few months ago, I asked in jest if he had had a malaria test," Dr Rupal Maru of the Kenyatta Nairobi Hospital recalls. She was surprised when her friend took the advice seriously and was diagnosed with malaria.

"Now we regularly get cases of malaria not only from Nairobi but also other parts of the highlands which, unlike the rest of Kenya, were considered to be out of the range of this disease," Dr Maru told IPS.

Climate change, experts say, is the major factor responsible for malaria epidemics in the highlands. About 50 percent of all outpatients reporting at hospitals have malaria and 20-30 percent of hospital admissions are on account of ths disease. It is the leading cause of mortality in the country, accounting for 20-25 percent of all deaths.

In times of anomalous temperature variations, as many as 70 percent of the population could be at risk.

"There is a clear correlation between climatic variations and malaria epidemics," says Dr Willis Akhwale, head of Kenya's National Malaria Control Programme. He referred to a 1998 investigation by his department into the breakout of epidemics in Kericho, a district in the southwestern highlands known for its tea production and cool climate. The study determined that the El Nino effect had raised temperatures by 2.2 – 4.5 degrees celsius between January and March 1997 and by 1.8-3.0 degrees celsius in February-April 1998, leading to the sudden occurrence of epidemics.

The science of this phenomenon is simple: the mosquito-transmitted parasite requires an 'ambience temperature' – usually a quarterly mean of over 18-19 degrees celsius – which occurs in the highlands only in unusually warm years, as in 1997-98 due to El Nino. Such years are becoming more frequent now.

Previous records in East Africa's highlands show, said Akhwale, that "the epidemics of the 1940s, for example, and some in 1905 were also the times when high temperatures were recorded internally and globally."

"But, generally, the highlands were cool, there were low temperatures and there was no malaria there in the past. So, people living in the highlands have no immunity against it," Akhwale said.

This means that when it does break out in high altitude areas, the population in these areas are more vulnerable to an epidemic than the population in the lowlands where malaria has long been common.

The low level of immunity adds another complication. While in the lowland areas, children are more likely to get the disease than adults who have been exposed it before, in the highlands adults and children are equally likely to be affected.

As people of all ages are vulnerable, the epidemic moves faster and the impact is more widespread. As 20 percent of Kenya's population – eight million people – living in the highland areas are now exposed to malaria, new plans for preparing and responding to an epidemic are needed. So far, this has meant introducing household indoor residual spraying in highland areas and ensuring health facilities are equipped with appropriate medicines.

Rising temperatures, changes in farming patterns and clearing of forests to make way for farming all play their part in the spread of malaria in the highlands. But according to Dr Akhwale the displacement of people for socio-economic reasons is one of the main causes of the increase.

Dr Maru also points to the displacement caused by conflict, especially the post-election violence earlier this year which left more than 600,000 people homeless, most of them from the Rift Valley and other farming regions. "I can tell from my daily experience that there has been a noticeable increase in cases of malaria in Nairobi since the forced movement of people from malarial regions. With them the malaria vector mosquitoes find new habitats. Also, displacement restricts access to health facilities and medicines which makes the disease multiply." she said.

Akhwale believes that it will take at least 15 years of consistent effort, from community interventions to regional cooperation, before malaria can be brought under control in East Africa. The highlands of north-western Tanzania, eastern Uganda, Ethiopia, Brundi and Rwanda have also had recent epidemics.

He also cited the case of the Gulf of Guinea where the government was able to fully control the disease in the 1980s, only to see it recur years later as the parasite developed resistance to chloroquine, the medicine used to control malaria there. Beating malaria would take constant vigilance and persistence with effective control programmes.

Effective malaria control, Akhwale said, needed to include an environmental management component. His department's programme incorporated measures to protect the environment, but it was not always possible to include these measures in national policy because environmental considerations were overridden by economic factors. He noted, however, that businesses and industry in Kenya were becoming more environmentally conscious.

"So, it's just the beginning of the war," said Akhwale. He believes that there has been an overall reduction in the cases of malaria over the last two years in Kenya; "But we should not be excited that we can control the malaria anytime soon."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, May 27 2008 (IPS)

The May edition of popular Ethiopian entertainment magazine Enku did not appear on newsstands as scheduled this month. Ethiopian police impounded all 10,000 copies before they could be distributed; Alemayehu Mahtemework, the magazine's publisher and deputy editor, was charged with threatening public order and spent five days in detention, along with three of his staff.

Serkalem Fasil, a journalist who was herself imprisoned by the Meles Zenawi government for writing articles critical of the conduct of the 2005 parliamentary elections, believes that the police action against the magazine was intended to send out a message to the media in general.

"The suppression of Ethiopia's free press is probably the most overlooked story in Africa," says Fasil whose exposés on election-rigging were followed by her arrest in November 2005 along with her brother, husband and a dozen others on charges of genocide and treason. Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth to her baby in jail – she would not be released for 18 months.

The charges against Alemayehu stem from Enku's cover story for May, a feature on the arrest and trial of one of the country's most popular singers, Tewodros Kassahun. Better known to Ethiopians as Teddy Afro, the singer appeared in court on April 23, where he pleaded not guilty to involvement in a hit-and-run accident in November 2006.

Razak Adam, an Ethiopian development worker based in Nairobi, says that anywhere else in the world, Kassahun's trial might simply be a story of celebrity misdeeds, but in Ethiopia, it is widely viewed as politically motivated. His music and public statements are critical of government policies and his April court appearance sparked impromptu protests in Addis Ababa, involving thousands of his fans, mostly teenagers. Such protests are a rare sight in the tightly-controlled Ethiopian capital. A similar spontaneous protest took place at the Addis Ababa Stadium on May 4, when many of the 35,000 fans at the 16th African Athletics Championships began chanting "Free Teddy" slogans after Ethiopian runner Kenenisa Bekele won the 5,000 meter race.

"In Ethiopia, the story is deeply political and complex as it reflects not only the precarious state of press freedom; it also raises some other critical but unaddressed issues which are pulling Ethiopian society apart," Adam told IPS.

These simmering issues encompass Ethiopia's past as well as its present. Kassahun sings tunes and lyrics that challenge ethnic and religious divisions in society. His 2005 hit, Yasteseryal ("redemption" in Amharic) was used by opposition parties as their anthem to rally the public against the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The video for the song includes images of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the Derg – the repressive military government that succeeded the emperor – and the present leadership under Zenawi; the lyrics suggest that the regimes have changed, but the people still suffer. Since then, Kassahun's music has been banned from all state-controlled media.

To most of his listeners, though, Kassahun is a hero. By giving coverage to his trial, Mahtemework and his avowedly non-political magazine attracted the hostile attention of the government. Mahtemework says Enku has been routinely censored by its government-owned printer since it began covering Teddy Afro's music in December, but he did not anticipate his arrest or the confiscation of his magazine. "Ever since the third issue of our magazine, we have been subjected to censorship by the printer. We expected to be told that the coverage of the Tewodros Kassahun's trial would not pass the censors, but the impounding was a surprise to us."

The Enku episode is a continuation of the crackdown on independent media. Serkalem Fasil – arrested in 2005 – was not released until April 2007, when she was acquitted on all charges. But heavy fines had already been imposed on the three newspapers published by her company, Serkalem Publishing House, and they were eventually closed down. Though there is no legal justification, the government is refusing to grant her licences to start new newspapers.

The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association, along with Fasil, led the campaign for the release of Enku's editor. International press freedom watchdogs also swiftly condemned the government's actions against Enku and its staff.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Mahtemework's arrest and Reporters Without Borders, an international organisation that fights censorship and defends journalists, issued a statement saying, "The Ethiopian authorities have sent a very negative signal by choosing the eve… of World Press Freedom Day to arrest a journalist and seize an issue of an independent magazine." The organisation threatened to put Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi back on a list of what it calls "press freedom predators"; Zenawi was taken off the list in 2007, in recognition of an improvement in the media freedom in Ethiopia.

Despite his arrest and the charges pending against him, Mahtemework remained positive. "My morale is good. We want to continue publishing, but all our working capital is invested in the monthly issue which has been impounded… our hands are tied."

The onslaught against Enku cannot be seen in isolation from the wider political and cultural problems in Ethiopia. The Teddy Afro affair and the Enku episode are symptoms of the government's aversion to even a hint of dissent.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Mar 19 2008 (IPS)

More than a week after the launch of an army operation to flush out the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) in Mount Elgon, a district along the border with Uganda, the fugitive chief of the outlawed militia has reportedly urged an end to the campaign, but remained defiant towards government.

"The security officers are looking for something they cannot find. Why are they hurting civilians?" said John Kanai during a phone interview with Radio West FM that received coverage from other media; the station is located in the border town of Bungamo.

He is also said to have called on authorities to push for a resumption of peace talks between the elders of two rival Sabaot sub-clans in the region: the majority Soy group in whose name the SLDF operates, and the Ndorobo sub-clan – a target of SLDF activity.

The radio interview came after the Mount Elgon district commissioner, Mohammed Biriki, gave militiamen an amnesty period of a week to surrender their weapons.

A television journalist based in Kitale, the main city in the adjoining Trans Nzoia district, told IPS that Biriki&#39s announcement meant government believed there was now sufficient pressure on militia members to make them lay down arms; the offer of amnesty expires Friday.

"There has been no noticeable resistance from the rag-tag militia since the start of the operation," said Eric Otieno. "They are either on the run or under arrest."

The SLDF chief&#39s interview, however, suggests that the grouping might prove more resistant than anticipated to the operation, which began Mar. 10 and has seen a door-to-door search for SLDF members in the Cheptais division of the Elgon district – and accompanying aerial attacks by helicopters on suspected militia hideouts along the Lwakhakha and Cheptais Rivers.

Eight people have apparently died in the campaign, while hundreds of families have been forced to leave their homes. In addition, more than 300 suspected SLDF members have been arrested during the operation, which the local media have been barred from monitoring; 150 detainees have been formally charged with having links to the SLDF and promoting violence.

Most of the detainees were arrested on the farm of a former member of parliament for Mount Elgon, Davies Nakitare, who was himself given an ultimatum by police to surrender. Other prominent arrests include those of two local chiefs, a senior police officer and several teachers for allegedly providing support to the militia.

Response from civil society

Human rights organisations and the media have strongly criticised the secrecy and severity of the army operation, as well as the alleged harassment of the civilian population and the detention of newspaper and television reporters who tried to enter Cheptais.

"We have no major issue with the military trying to disarm and capture militiamen," Mutuku Nguli, director of Peacenet, a network of development groups, said in an interview with IPS. "But, we have an issue with the violations of human rights in the process of doing that."

Referring to the denial of access to the media to cover the military campaign, Nguli noted that "What the operation wants to achieve must be within the parameters of transparency, accountability and civility. Secrecy and the suffering of the civilian population will not help achieve those objectives."

He believes that while the military may be able crush the SLDF, it "cannot sort out the problems which ignited this conflict in the first place."

These, he added, stem from historical injustices to indigenous people, use of land for political patronage and neglect on the part of successive Kenyan governments in addressing these issues.

Chronology of the conflict

The seeds of conflict in Mount Elgon were sown in 1965 when the government of founding president Jomo Kenyatta decided to resettle Ndorobo families which had been forced by colonial authorities to move to Chepkitale, near the top of Mount Elgon – this in the 1950s.

Originally, 690 Ndorobo families from Chepkitale were to be settled at Chebyuk farm on the southern slopes of the mountain, an area that previously formed part of the protected Elgon forest. Each family was offered about two hectares (five acres) of land, although they had demanded an acre in Chebyuk for every acre left behind in Chepkitale, which was transformed into a game reserve.

It was not until 1974 that the land was allotted by a government committee. By that time, Ndorobo families from Chepkitale had invited 300 Soy families to the area in a bid to lay claim to the whole of Chebyuk.

Relations between the two Sabaot sub-clans were good initially, with Soy and Ndorobo elders agreeing that the Teremi River in lower Chebyuk would constitute the boundary between the communities.

Under the 1974 resettlement, Ndorobos received 65 per cent of the land, while Soy families were given the remainder. Chebyuk was to be divided into three portions, referred to locally as "phases": land in phase one and two was intended mainly for Ndorobos, phase three for Soys.

However, land tenure remained uncertain and subject to official review which was done in every election year, leading to Chebyuk becoming a political tool in the hands of local politicians and civil servants.

"In spite of the official policy of land privatisation and the issuing of title deeds in Kenya, this policy was never finalised in Chebyuk. The lack of official documents to prove land ownership did not prevent land transactions, however," said academic Claire Medard, author of &#39Indigenous land claims in Kenya: A case study of Chebyuk, Mount Elgon district&#39.

"Those who were given land by the government started in turn to allocate land to others. Some people borrowed, others rented, and others bought land," she told IPS.

With Ndorobos selling or renting their property to Soys, the latter gradually took over much of the land. Many Ndorobos were reluctant to farm their properties, preferring to maintain their hunter-gatherer culture; some even returned to Chepkitale.

Over the next few years, the land changed ownership many times. In addition to Soys, members of other tribes settled in Chebyuk – with increases in population intensifying the struggle for resources, and fuelling inter-clan rivalry.

In 1987, Ndorobo allegations about illegal Soy settlement concerning the first two phases of the Chebyuk scheme led to the re-examination of this initiative by the government of then president Daniel arap Moi.

Two years later, the administration settled Ndorobos in a bid to complete allocation of phase one and two land, which ultimately involved some 1,170 Ndorobo families.

However, Soys were evicted in this process: having bought property informally from Ndorobos, they possessed no records of land ownership that might have enabled them to remain in the areas they inhabited. Land provided to Soys under the third phase of the Chebyuk allocation – and which they had occupied – reverted to the forestry department to be replanted with trees.

Resentment among Soys over the Moi government&#39s refusal to heed their grievances led to tribal clashes in the area in 1992. The violence forced Moi to revive phase three of the Chebyuk scheme and allow a thousand Soys to settle. In 1993, the Soy settlers cleared another square kilometre of the Elgon forest to bring in more families.

Once more, title deeds remained elusive – and yet again, transactions in land continued, amid further enmity and occasional clashes between Soys and Ndorobos.

In 2003, the ruling National Rainbow Coalition of Mwai Kibaki made another attempt to settle the issue. Assisted by Soy and Ndorobo elders the government vetted 8,000 people, but selected only 1,732 as genuinely deserving resettlement in land designated under phase three.

Moves were made to have Ndorobos and Soys share land equally in 2006. However, these were resisted by the Soy, who claimed ownership of the land – setting the stage for the SLDF&#39s formation that year to mount armed resistance against the land allocation. Since then, it has virtually controlled the area with its militant tactics, and expanded its activities into neighbouring districts.

Over the past two years, more than 600 people have been killed in SLDF attacks and over 60,000 displaced, according to United Nations statistics. The conflict is now no longer confined to Soys and Ndorobos, having spread to other clans.

A matter of political will

Peacenet&#39s Nguli claims that decisive political intervention could have prevented the problems at Mount Elgon from escalating into a complicated, many-sided conflict – noting that it was not until as late as 2007 that these difficulties were put on the agenda of parliamentary proceedings.

"Throughout this period, violence in the region was confined to two factions of the Sabaot ethnic group distinguished by their topographical locations: the Soy of the lowlands and indigenous Ndorobos of the highlands. However, since the formation of the SLDF in 2006 demanding eviction of the Ndorobos and other settler communities and resettlement of Soy families, the scope of violence has increased manifold."

"There has been an utter lack of political will and intent to solve the problem," he added. "An amicable settlement could have been reached much earlier had the central government taken due interest. Even now, a political solution is warranted and can work better than the military option."

For Kenya&#39s coalition government, led by Kibaki and prime minister-designate Raila Odinga, the Elgon conflict is just one of many land-related disputes in the East African country demanding attention. Concerns about land rights were amongst the factors underpinning the recent wave of post-election violence in Kenya, sparked by opposition claims that Kibaki&#39s Dec. 27 victory in the presidential poll was as a result of rigging.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Feb 24 2008 (IPS)

A fifth week of talks to end Kenya&#39s violent election dispute is scheduled to begin Monday, with the extent of power to be exercised by a new prime minister one of the key items on the agenda.

ODM leader Odinga, President Kibaki and former UN head Annan pictured during Kenyan peace talks. Credit: Boniface Mwangi/IRIN

Having agreed to create the post, negotiators are now grappling with how much authority the prime minister should have.

"The two teams have to reconcile two different ways of envisaging the…proposed office of prime minister," Paul Genchu, a political analyst based in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IPS. "The Kibaki team does not want dilution of presidential powers, whereas ODM would settle for nothing less than a prime minister with executive powers and independent of presidential veto."

While officials of the ODM and Kibaki&#39s Party of National Unity (PNU) are giving little away, observers here believe that the executive powers at issue include the control of government ministries and departments.

The minimum required by the opposition, ODM legislator Ababu Namwamba said Friday, "is the executive premiership as provided in the Bomas Draft" – this in reference to the initial version of a new constitution drawn up to replace Kenya&#39s existing, colonial-era constitution. The draft takes its name from &#39Bomas of Kenya&#39, a cultural venue outside the capital where the National Constitutional Conference gathered to draw up the 2004 document.

The draft provided for a powerful premier and the devolution of power to regions. It was subsequently altered by legislators to maintain strong presidential authority, and the amended version put to a national referendum in 2005. Following a determined campaign by the opposition and civic organisations, the amended draft was rejected by Kenyans.

"There must be a clear separation of state and government," Namwamba told journalists. In addition to the prime minister&#39s post, ODM also has its sights set on the two deputy prime ministers&#39 positions that have been agreed, and on high-profile cabinet portfolios.

Squaring talks with the constitution

If and when the two sides agree on the prime minister&#39s powers, they will have to come to terms with the equally difficult matter of how to make the post constitutionally tenable. Kenya briefly had a prime minister after it gained independence in 1963, the post being abolished by founding father Jomo Kenyatta in 1964.

"Two methods have been proposed: an act of parliament, the option favoured by the Kibaki team, and a constitutional amendment – which ODM wants," said Genchu. "Both procedures will have far-reaching consequences and the talks could make or break on this point."

Perhaps the only certainty is that Kenyans find themselves in uncharted territory. "But no one would want back to go to an artificial air of normalcy after what has happened," says Zafar Rajan, a human rights activist and constitutional expert. "There are too many things to be fixed before it could be business as normal."

Cost of Failure

With an agreement between the ODM and PNU having remained elusive, Kenyans are beginning to contemplate the ramifications of failure at the negotiating table, notably a renewed surge of the violence that has cost over 1,000 lives and displaced as many as 600,000 people, often along ethnic lines. Kibaki is a member of the Kikuyu, Kenya&#39s largest ethnic group – long resented for its political and economic dominance – while Odinga is a Luo.

Notes a Feb. 21 report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), &#39Kenya in Crisis&#39: "Armed groups are still mobilising on both sides. ODM…is under pressure from its core constituencies…to demand nothing less than the presidency, and its supporters could easily renew violent confrontations if Kibaki&#39s Party of National Unity (PNU) coalition remains inflexible." (The ICG is a Brussels-based think tank.)

However, the Kibaki administration "is buying time to wear down both the opposition and the international community&#39s resolve," the report adds.

"It benefits from the presidency&#39s extensive powers, including unlimited access to public resources. It insists the situation is under control and there is no power vacuum, tends to treat Annan&#39s mission as a sideshow while sponsoring alternative reconciliation processes, seeks to have Kibaki&#39s election recognised by neighbouring countries and continues to resist genuine sharing of executive power."

The Kenyan talks are being mediated by former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a brief visit to Nairobi to add her voice to the chorus of appeals for a timely resolution of the Kenyan crisis.

"The diplomatic intervention could not more high profile," says Rajan. "So, a failure could not only push Kenya off the brink, it will also undermine the moral and political authority of the international organisations and Western powers."

These words were echoed by Winnie Wanjara, a businesswoman. "I&#39m tired, very tired," she noted. "If someone as respected as Kofi Annan and as powerful as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cannot make them agree to get into a grand coalition, there is not much hope of long term peace and stability."

Annan has said both sides in the talks realise that power-sharing needs to be underpinned by wide-ranging reforms to address the root causes of election violence, such as socio-economic disparities between Kenyans.

According to the ICG, "The ODM and PNU do not control the local violence. There is a chance to restore state authority and prevent renewed major fighting only if local leaders understand that their grievances are being addressed and concrete measures are being rapidly implemented."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Feb 15 2008 (IPS)

Efforts to defuse the post-election crisis in Kenya have entered a decisive phase, with negotiators appointed by President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga close to agreeing on a power-sharing government, chief mediator Kofi Annan said Friday.

Former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, chief mediator in talks to end Kenya's post-election crisis. Credit: Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo

Kenya descended into mayhem after the Dec. 27 presidential poll, which Odinga claims was rigged. International observers also expressed concern about the ballot; however, Kibaki insists his victory was fair.

Annan told reporters that the negotiating teams for the two politicians would refer back to him next Tuesday, probably with an agreement on a new governance arrangement to address the political gridlock that followed the vote.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who arrives in Nairobi Monday, is expected to give the two sides a final nudge to conclude a deal.

Prospects for a joint government have been clouded by the fact that an earlier power-sharing arrangement between Kibaki and Odinga collapsed.

This arrangement involved a memorandum of understanding signed ahead of the 2002 elections by the National Alliance Party of Kenya – then headed by Kibaki – and the Liberal Democratic Party, under Odinga. These parties formed part of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which went on to win the vote.

The memorandum guaranteed that Odinga would become prime minister in return for his support of NARC, even though the constitution does not provide for this post.

Asked what assurances would be put in place to ensure that a new deal remains intact, Annan replied that this aspect of the process had not yet been taken up.

He also refused to give details of the power-sharing options on the table; the matter of Kenya&#39s future governance is said to be the only outstanding item on the four-point agenda for talks. Initially, Odinga had demanded that Kibaki step down, and elections be re-held.

Essential reforms

The two camps recognise, Annan said, that given the nature of the Kenyan crisis, "power sharing is not about government positions or ministries" but about working together to implement a package of wide-ranging reforms. These changes are needed to address the underlying roots of the election difficulties.

Laying down the broad parameters of what promises to be a protracted and contentious process of constitutional, judicial, electoral and administrative reform, the Ghanaian diplomat said the core questions of land and poverty could not be resolved without a grand coalition of politicians willing to push through with change.

He also cited Japan and other western democracies as examples of states where intractable political disputes had given rise to cross-party coalitions.

In Kenya, Annan added, neither of the two main parties enjoyed enough parliamentary support to move ahead with reforms.

Electoral probe

Another gain made during talks is the agreement on constituting an Independent Review Commission (IRC) to examine all aspects of the contested election and its bloody aftermath. Kibaki&#39s team previously spurned any means of settling the poll dispute other than those provided by the courts.

"Facts have to be known. Kenyans have the right to know what happened," said Annan. He further noted that the two sides had agreed the IRC would be constituted no later than Mar. 15, and present its report within three to six months. A non-judicial body, the commission will comprise local and foreign constitutional and election experts, as well as diplomats.

Explaining why a recount of votes had been discarded as an option to address the electoral dispute, Annan said tallying votes again would only have exacerbated tensions.

A truth and reconciliation commission to help Kenyans deal with the trauma of the past weeks is also envisaged. Details have not yet been finalised; however, the Kenyan chapter of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) also backed the idea of such a commission, Friday. "We need to know the victims of the violence, who perpetrated it and how," said an ICJ official. "Kenya needs to know who burned the farms and churches and who killed so many innocent people."

Annan further noted that Kenya was too important for the region and the wider world to be allowed to drift away into chaos. He reiterated that he had the support of the international community in his effort to find a sustainable solution to the East African state&#39s problems.

The former U.N. secretary-general is being assisted in his mediation by Graca Machel, a leading child rights activist and the wife of former South African leader Nelson Mandela, and erstwhile Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa. Kibaki&#39s Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement, headed by Odinga, each have four negotiators at the talks – which began towards the end of last month.

More than a thousand lives have been lost in the election violence, and as many as 600,000 persons displaced, according to the United Nations.

The crisis has brought ethnic divisions to the fore, with significant anger directed against the Kikuyu, Kenya&#39s largest ethnic group, to which Kibaki belongs. Many Kenyans resent Kikuyu dominance of political and business affairs.

Odinga is a member of the Luo group, the third-largest tribe in Kenya.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 28 2008 (IPS)

There is more to Kenya’s post-election violence than a bungled vote count and so-called tribal rivalries. As protests degenerate into organised ethnic violence in Rift Valley towns and countryside, the root-cause of the unrest lies elsewhere.

"We must tackle the fundamental issues underlying the disturbances – like equitable distribution of resources – or else we will be back here again after three or four years," former U.N. chief Kofi Annan told journalists in Nairobi’s Serena Hotel Sunday, after talking to survivors of the violence which has claimed over 1,000 lives and displaced some 250,000 people since the December election.

Though Annan’s mediation to initiate a structured dialogue between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga is making progress – Kibaki and Odinga shook one another’s hands last week and vowed to continue a dialogue to resolve the crisis – the wave of violence has taken on its own dynamics.

Even if Kibaki, a Kikuyu, and Odinga, a Luo, were to make peace and reach a power-sharing deal down the line, the chronic economic and political root- causes of the tribal violence would not go away.

"Its characterisation as a tribal enmity is simplistic – access to land, housing, and water are the real issues that appear in the guise of ethnicity and are triggered by political disputes," said a Danish aid worker who was part of an emergency assessment team in the Rift Valley. "There is an unmistakable class dimension to the turmoil in Kenyan society," the aid worker said, wishing to remain anonymous.

"Only one category of people had come out to protest against the electoral irregularities: the poorest of the poor, the jobless, and the landless. People from only one class are seen to be committing violence and registering resentment against poll cheating," says Millicent Ogutu, who works at a Nairobi-based media company.

In Nairobi, the only sites of trouble throughout the post-election spree of violence have been the slums of Kibera, Mathare, and other shantytowns. This pattern is visible also in other troubled regions, such as Kisumu in Odinga’s home province of Nyanza, and in the Rift Valley towns of Eldoret, Molo, Nakuru, and Naivasha.

Following conciliatory speeches made in the presence of Annan by Kibaki and Odinga outside Harambee House, the president’s office, Ogutu and others IPS talked to expressed scepticism that any long-term solution to Kenya’s gaping economic disparity, tribe-based cronyism, and corruption would be reached.

"Have you seen any middle-class person of any tribe shouting slogans against either Odinga or Kibaki?" asked Raphael Karanja, a radio journalist. "It is only the people who had a misplaced faith in the power of the ballot, and who genuinely believed that their vote can lead to a change of guard and better economic policies that might alleviate their basic problems of land, housing, and drinking water that have risen up in protest."

Most of the protestors – in Nairobi’s slums and other places – belong to the Luo and Klenjin tribes while the majority of victims of the recent violence have been the Kikuyus. But beneath these simplistic tribal battle-lines lie the historic patterns of uneven resource distribution in Kenya.

The biggest issue is that of land. "The state had showed a blatant bias in favour of one tribe at the expense of the rest at the time of independence when the land left behind by the British was to be distributed among the local people," says an economics professor at the University of Nairobi, who wishes to remain anonymous, as he is a government employee. Kikuyus bought much of the land in Kenya – even in non-Kikuyu regions – as they dominated the first administration of Jumo Kenyatta and were given preferential treatment in the award of loans for buying land.

"That resulted in Kikuyu families holding land in the midst of other tribes, especially in the fertile Rift Valley, the main region of turmoil in every wave of electoral violence that Kenya has seen since a multiparty system was introduced in 1992," the professor explained.

The Dec. 2007 elections were not the first perceived to be rigged. They were not the first to lead to post-electoral violence. Similar spurts of tribal violence – mainly anti-Kikuyu – also took place in the run-up to the 1992 elections and, on a much larger scale, during and after the 1997 elections.

Another big issue is that of housing and water in the localities where the poorest people live. The issue is directly related to corruption. "The gap between the few rich and the majority poor has widened so greatly over the last decade that even if a common Kenyan is able to raise resources and wants to build a proper house, he finds bureaucratic hurdles at every step which cannot be overcome without extra money for corrupt officials," says Ogutu.

There are no middle class neighbourhoods in Nairobi. There are either slums, or posh, rich localities.

"Under [President Daniel arap] Moi’s and Kibaki’s governments, the rich have gotten super rich and adopted a culture of conspicuous consumption with big cars and bigger houses. On the other hand, the poor have been further impoverished and conspicuously so. The middle class has shrunk, with the very few moving up but most of them barely surviving the slide down into the economic and social abyss," says the professor. The violence that has taken on tribal characteristics is in fact rooted in the widening class divisions between the rich and poor of the country.

The poor thought that democracy and elections would help them influence government policy. Odinga raised expectations by campaigning as the people’s candidate and a champion of the poor. He received votes across tribal divides.

"After the peaceful transition of power in 2002, most Kenyans actually had faith that they can bring about another change through their vote. Hence, the large turnout and the peaceful December elections," says Ogutu. "That faith is irreparably dented. Raila shaking hands with Kibaki is cosmetic and, at best, a momentary and tenuous truce. It won’t change a thing for them. They’ll be back on the street sooner or later."

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 23 2008 (IPS)

Post-election politics in Kenya has become a war of attrition, and President Mwai Kibaki seems to be winning it, the cost to the image and economy of the country notwithstanding.

"How long can poor people continue to protest on empty stomachs and against the gun power of the state?" says James Mwangi, a bartender whose shack in the Kibera slum was destroyed last week during 3 days of protests called by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). "This is not the first time polls have been rigged in Kenya, and it’s not the first time that we’ll see an incumbent government carry on regardless," Mwangi told IPS.

After three weeks of turmoil, hundreds of deaths, tens of thousands of people displaced, and an incalculable loss to the economy, the poll-rigging dispute between Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga remains unresolved.

ODM has been forced to change tactics from street protests – which were brutally suppressed – to economic boycotts of businesses "owned by Kibaki’s allies". Announcing the new plan to journalists, a spokesman for Odinga said, "The strategy is to weaken those who are hard-liners and using their wealth to undermine democracy." Few believe the new tactic will have any impact on a government that has remained impervious to pressure from abroad and chaos at home.

People in Nairobi hope things are returning to ‘normal’. The capital was trouble-free Saturday. No violence was reported from other hotbeds of recent violence – especially Odinga’s hometown Kisumu and Eldoret – though security forces remained vigilant and on patrol in the more volatile localities.

The key to Kibaki’s resolute defiance is unflinching loyalty from security forces.

"Much has been made of the freezing of aid by the European Union (EU), the loss of tourism revenue, and the destruction of businesses during the initial wave of violence," says a local businessman, "But as long as the police and the army are on his side, Kibaki can sustain all other pressures while the protesters cannot."

Initial rumours of dissent and dissatisfaction within the security establishment have proved unfounded. If anything, the forceful manner in which opposition rallies were crushed points to Kibaki’s complete control over the state apparatus.

Analysts say the composition of police and other security forces – especially the General Services Unit – partly explains their allegiance to Kibaki. "The country has had three presidents since 1963. Two of them Kikuyus – the country’s founder Jumo Kenyatta and Kibaki – and one Klenjin, Daniel arap Moi. These two tribes are heavily represented in the police and security forces," says a University of Nairobi professor. "As ex-president Moi is also supporting the government, his constituency within the establishment is unlikely to part ways with Kibaki," the professor stressed.

He also points out that there is no tradition in Kenya of direct military intervention in political disputes.

The opposition’s stance has also been undermined by shrewd political moves by the Kibaki. The convening of the new parliament – in which ODM’s candidate Kenneth Marende was elected as speaker, and other elected members were sworn in – has provided a semblance of legitimacy to the post-election political setup.

Kibaki has already named half the cabinet, and ministers have taken over their respective departments. Even if his re-election is in dispute, Kibaki has continued to conduct affairs of the state as usual.

Though many observers see ODM’s victory in the election for speaker as a moral and psychological blow against Kibaki, it means little in terms of power sharing. Also, the functioning of the parliament – however rowdy and quarrelsome – sent out a message that the system can work, and ODM can influence governance from within the house.

Nishet Shah, a political analyst, says the constitution of Kenya vests too much power in the office of president to make him bow to parliament. "Any person occupying the position of president has immense control… This power is overarching in nature and, despite there being a parliament and constitution in place, the president can easily bypass these," Shah told IPS.

In Kibaki’s case, it seems, he also has the power to ignore the loss of human lives and livelihoods as well as exhortations from world powers.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 14 2008 (IPS)

Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan has his work cut out for him as Kenya &#39s tenth parliament is due to convene Tuesday amid calls from the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) for a 3-day mass protest beginning Wednesday.

Annan accepted an invitation from Ghana&#39s President John Kufuor – in his capacity as the current Chairman of the African Union (AU) – to head a team of mediators to help broker peace in Kenya.

However, the terms of his engagement in Kenya are shrouded in semantic confusion. The ODM welcomes international &#39mediation&#39 to resolve the crisis; the Kibaki government, on the other hand, wants no foreign diplomat doing more than &#39facilitate a dialogue&#39.

"We want Annan to mediate with full knowledge of the magnitude of the problem," ODM secretary-general Anyang Nyong&#39o said in a statement read before the party&#39s members of parliament (MPs).

Kibaki&#39s ministers refuse to accept any reference to mediation. Given their strident tone, they may even be attempting to keep Annan&#39s team away.

"If Kofi Annan is coming, he is not coming at our invitation," Roads and Public Works Minister John Michuki, a member of Kibaki&#39s new cabinet, told the press. "We won the elections so we do not see the point for anyone coming to mediate power-sharing."

The battle-line is clearly drawn once again as Kenya braces for another wave of unrest and violence.

The Orange House – ODM&#39s headquarters in Nairobi&#39s Kilimani area – is full of resentful party workers, and abuzz with protest plans, in spite of protests having been declared illegal by the government.

Two high-profile mediation missions to resolve Kenya&#39s poll-rigging crisis failed last week. Both U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer and Kufuor returned home frustrated.

Kofi Annan will start a third round of negotiations Tuesday at the head of a 3-member AU team. The other members of the team are Nelson Mandela&#39s wife Graca Machel and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.

What hope does Annan have to bring the controversially re-elected president Mwai Kibaki and his rival Railia Odinga to the table when Kufuor and, more tellingly, Frazer could not? The situation is grim and prospects for success slim.

The disgruntled ODM has upped the ante by asking international donors to freeze aid to pressure the Kibaki government into accepting international mediation. "It is patently obvious that we do not have a partner to negotiate with," says a senior member of ODM, referring to Kibaki&#39s refusal to even acknowledge the foreign diplomatic intervention as &#39mediation&#39. "How can donors trust a government that steals votes?"

Kibaki sponsored a full-page ad in Sunday&#39s newspapers alleging ODM responsibility for sabotaging Kufuor&#39s bid to "facilitate dialogue". The government&#39s statement called ODM&#39s stance as "a blanket case of deceit".

A Machiavellian pattern is emerging in Kenya&#39s troubled post-election political milieu. Every time an international mediator arrives, the controversially re-elected Kibaki moves the goalposts and changes the parameters of possible negotiations.

Frazer hurried to Nairobi as violence began to escalate in the wake of Kibaki&#39s disputed victory in the Dec. 27 elections, but Kibaki had already been sworn in as president before Frazer&#39s intervention. Then, when Kufuor came to Nairobi last week to try and broker a deal, a new cabinet was announced though the ministers had yet to take oaths as members of parliament – a constitutional prerequisite to becoming cabinet members.

Annan&#39s arrival Tuesday will coincide with the convening of the new parliament and a series of protest rallies the ODM has called on the occasion. The 100-strong contingent of ODM MPs plans to occupy government benches in defiance of Kibaki&#39s actions.

In order to bridge the gulf between the two sides, Annan will have to press home two points. First, Kenya&#39s political crisis cannot be seen in isolation from its tragic humanitarian dimension. Second, the international disrepute Kenya has recently earned after years of being perceived as an oasis of stability may result in severe economic hardships for a country reliant on tourists and foreign aid.

On the first point, the initial spurt of violence may have receded, but violence has not stopped. In fact it seems likely that hostilities will re-emerge with a vengeance. It will take the country a long time to recover from the death and displacement it has already suffered. The official toll of around 600 dead and 250,000 displaced is highly conservative. Aid and relief agencies working in many displacement &#39sites&#39 – the government does not want to call them camps – paint a much bleaker picture and also warn that the violence is continuing.

"Though some areas have calmed down and in some the displaced can return to their homes, the number of new arrivals in displacement sites is still more than those returning," says a Danish aid worker whose team carried out a needs-assessment mission in displacement camps in the Rift Valley and Nairobi. The majority of the displaced are living in churches, schools and stadiums. The longer the political stalemate continues, the more perilous the situation will become.

The cruel irony in this large-scale internal displacement of Kenyans is not lost to aid workers based in Nairobi, as the country takes pride in housing refugees from all over the conflict-ridden region. For more than 16 years, people fleeing from Somalia &#39s civil war have found refuge in Kenyan camps. Almost all aid agencies working in Somalia and in other regional hotspots are based in Nairobi. "Now, more Kenyans are in need of humanitarian assistance, shelter and food than the refugees from other countries living in the country," says Jens Christiansen of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

On the second point, Annan will need to build on the pressure already exerted by the U.S., UK, and other foreign powers. The State Department&#39s tough words Sunday – that it will not be business as usual with Kenya unless negotiations to address the crisis started in earnest – ought to be repeated with more force by Annan.

Many European countries have already issued restrictive travel advisories for its citizens. Most of Kenya&#39s tourism sector and much of its status as the regional hub of international organisations and businesses are due to its reputation as a relatively stable and peaceful state in close proximity to numerous volatile countries like Somalia and Uganda.

Unless the Kibaki government softens its stance and strikes a deal with the opposition, the country will face international isolation, and possibly even sanctions.

It would be naïve to assume that the ruling clique led by Kibaki is unaware of these dangers. Annan&#39s team will have done its job if it demonstrates to the Kenyan regime that the costs of ignoring these internal dangers and external pressures are too high.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Jan 8 2008 (IPS)

When Kenya’s controversially re-elected president, Mwai Kibaki, appeared on national television to address the nation Tuesday evening, hopes were that he would address the humanitarian crisis his country faces in the wake of post- election tribal violence and hold out an olive branch to his rival Raila Odinga.

It was a shock to see him announce his cabinet for the next five years instead. It was redolent of his hastily taking oaths of office before the Electoral Commission of Kenya had formally certified the election results.

"Kenya is bracing itself for another spurt of political violence and hatred," a businessman close to Odinga told IPS.

"Kibaki has chosen to put himself and his cronies before the national interest. The result could be more tragic than the violence already witnessed in the post-election violence," the businessman said.

Sources told IPS that fighting has already erupted in Kisumu, a stronghold of Odinga&#39s Luo tribe, and in Mathare, Dandore and other parts of Nairobi.

Kibaki’s Tuesday address will add fuel to the fire that has been burning in Kenya’s multicultural, multiethnic countryside since Dec. 30 last year when he declared himself president even though his Party of National Unity (PNU) was roundly trounced in the parliamentary elections.

Following Kibaki’s declaration, the Kikuyus – Kibaki’s tribe – were targeted in a wave of unprecedented violence. In turn, the Luo tribe and Odinga’s other allies faced attacks of vengeance in Kikuyu dominated areas.

What ensued for the next week and a half was violence that evoked images of the Rwandan genocide more than a decade ago.

Prodded and pushed by the international community – notably U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer and African Union (AU) Chairman John Kufuor of Ghana – it seemed as if Kenya’s political elite was waking up from the violent nightmare that has haunted the country for the last ten days.

Kibaki and Odinga had agreed to have a meeting Friday to start talks on restoring a semblance of sanity amid tribal violence that has claimed 1,000 lives and displaced 250,000 people.

With the announcement of half the new cabinet ministers – the other half, Kibaki said, would be named later – any chances of a reconciliation process getting underway seems doomed.

Kibaki has failed to show the statesmanship, sensitivity and grace required to douse the burning flames of ethnic hatred. Instead he has chosen to cling on to power that the voters had denied his party.

In an apparent rebuke to Odinga’s conciliatory gestures and his acceptance of international mediation to resolve the crisis, Kibaki has chosen Kalonzo Musyoka as his vice-president. It is significant to note here that Musyoka heads the Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM-K) which is a breakaway faction of the ODM proper led by Odinga, whose members of parliament number around 100 in the newly elected parliament of 210 members.

Musyoka – who placed third in the race for the presidency between Odinga and Kibaki – advised Kibaki on Sunday to postpone announcing his cabinet so as to avoid further confrontation and to give mediation a chance.

Other members of Kibaki’s cabinet also demonstrated a blatant disregard of the grave situation in Kenya.

The official leader of the opposition in Kibaki’s previous presidency, Uhuru Kenyatta, a fellow Kikuyu, has been given a ministerial post along with John Michuki, a Kibaki confidant and a controversial figure believed to be orchestrating his bid for re-election at every cost.

The announcement of a cabinet at a time when the country is reeling from the trauma of sudden and unforeseen violence is jarring to say the least. It is especially provoking at a time when Kufuor was about to start his mediation effort – a move welcomed by Odinga and to which Kibaki’s spokesman Raphael Tuju had agreed to be a part of.

Odinga’s supporters have reacted angrily to Kibaki’s latest move. "We had given a chance to mediation and talks by calling off the Tuesday protest rally. What we get in return is a cabinet by a president whose very election is in dispute," says John Dolla, a Luo businessman in Nairobi.

"Instead of reciprocating Odinga’s gestures for peace and reconciliation," said another Nairobi resident, "Kibaki has gone ahead with plans to consolidate his presidency. This is outrageous and a clear provocation."

In the prevalent circumstances it is hard to see how international mediation can work. Kibaki’s national address to announce half his cabinet has pre- empted the AU peace bid and infuriated the opposition camp.

Odinga is unlikely to sit across the negotiating table from a president he and other international observers deem to be unfairly elected. What Kufuor’s mission can accomplish in this vitiated atmosphere remains to be seen.

That this has all happened after a day of elections that was peaceful and calm despite the huge turnout and close race is truly a damning reflection on the political class of Kenya.

They have failed their people who had voted for change through peaceful means.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI and JOHANNESBURG, Jan 3 2008 (IPS)

Opposition officials have postponed a gathering that was supposed to take place Thursday in Kenya&#39s capital, Nairobi, this after police clashed with demonstrators as they tried to make their way to Uhuru Park for the rally.

The head of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), Raila Odinga, had appealed for a million people to be present at the gathering, which forms part of a days-long campaign to have results from the Dec. 27 presidential poll, which saw head of state Mwai Kibaki returned to office, overturned. The event has apparently been rescheduled for next Tuesday.

Reports of violence also emerged from the coastal city of Mombasa.

The chairman of the African Union, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, had been expected in Kenya Thursday to help bring an end to post-election strife that has claimed upwards of 300 lives across the East African country, according to figures from the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the International Federation for Human Rights.

There appeared to be some uncertainty about his visit at the time of issuing this update, although the ODM has said it is willing to accept him as a mediator. However, former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu was said to have arrived in Nairobi to mediate in the crisis; plans have reportedly been made for him to hold talks with Odinga, but not with the president.

Appeals for calm have been made by Britain and the United States, among others, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown raising the possibility of an administration that includes both Odinga and Kibaki, sworn in for his second term on Sunday.

Between 70,000 and 100,000 people are said to have been displaced in the violence, which erupted over the weekend as concerns grew about the validity of the vote count for the presidential ballot. With opinion polls having given Odinga the edge over Kibaki during the campaign, the ODM head and his supporters were quick to allege electoral fraud concerning the president&#39s re-election.

Concerns about the poll were also expressed by the European Union observer mission, which earlier this week issued a damning assessment of certain aspects of the elections. A Jan. 1 statement from the mission quotes Chief Observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff as saying that "…problems started after the close of polls. EU observers were turned away from tallying centres, particularly in Central province, without being given results and were denied access to the tallying room at Electoral Commission (ECK) headquarters on several occasions."

Results from Central province were to prove decisive.

While Odinga was the clear frontrunner in the initial stages of the vote count, his lead eventually narrowed, amidst delays – notably in the announcement of results from Central province, a Kibaki stronghold. The final count gave the president victory by approximately 200,000 votes, sparking fears that results had been held back until officials knew by how much they should be inflated to ensure victory for Kibaki. The Odinga camp was, in turn, accused of vote rigging.

The Kenya Election Domestic Observation Forum also pronounced itself dissatisfied with the vote counting, and in a further twist, Electoral Commission of Kenya head Samuel Kivuitu told a local paper that he did not know whether Kibaki had won or not.

Widespread looting and arson have accompanied the death and displacement, which are being attributed to ethnic divides as much as political rivalries. Kibaki is part of the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya&#39s largest ethnic group, long dominant in business and politics to the ire of other tribes. Odinga is a member of the Luo group.

In perhaps the most shocking incident of the post-election period, as many as 50 people were killed Tuesday in the western town of Eldoret when the church that they had taken refuge in was set alight. Those in the church were said to be Kikuyus; western Kenya constitutes Odinga&#39s support base.

The political rhetoric has been as heated as the confrontations in Kenya&#39s streets and slums, with Kibaki and Odinga accusing each other of being responsible for genocide.

Matters have not been improved, say observers, by repressive treatment of protesters by police, or the imposition of a ban on live broadcasts – something that serves to encourage "a dangerous flurry of rumors and speculations," noted Tom Rhodes, Africa programme co-ordinator of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

"On a more positive note," says the EU statement, "the parliamentary election broadly appears to have commanded greater confidence amongst Kenyan people." (Dec. 27 also saw legislative and local elections take place in Kenya.)

The parliamentary ballot gave the ODM about 100 seats of the 210 contested, against almost 40 for Kibaki&#39s Party of National Unity (exact figures are not available on the ECK website), raising the spectre of a president hamstrung at every turn by hostile legislators. Kibaki&#39s invitation for parliament to meet him at State House this week was apparently rebuffed by opposition legislators.

Most of the president&#39s cabinet members were wiped from the electoral landscape on Dec. 27. Vice president Moodi Awori (ousted from a seat in the Western province that he had held for over 25 years), foreign affairs minister Raphael Tuju, information minister Mutahi Kagwe, health minister Paul Sang and lands minister Kivutha Kibwana were amongst the casualties.

Another clear statement of the electorate’s desire to make a break from the past was the defeat of three sons of former president Daniel arap Moi. Gideon Moi lost the Baringo Central Constituency in the Rift Valley, a seat the Moi family had held for the last 50 years on the platform of the Kenya African National Union. The other two, Jonathan Toroitich and Raymond Moi, were also allied with Kibaki, and duly lost to ODM candidates.

For many observers, it seemed clear that voters attached little significance to Kibaki’s achievements on the economic front. "It is a generational change. People have given a verdict against the longstanding, old political clique," said Andrew Mwangi, a civil servant.

This may have been because growth has largely failed to translate into better living standards for a good many Kenyans – in part because of corruption that Kibaki failed to quell, despite his promises to the contrary during the last polls, in 2002. Roads and the railway network did not improve either, while the largely inefficient bureaucratic machinery remained well entrenched.

But, the winds of change will blow to scant effect in parliament while the crisis over the presidency continues to loom.

When President Kenneth Kuanda lost the 1991 election in Zambia, a bewildered Mobutu Sese Seko exclaimed: "How could you lose an election you had organised yourself?"

Hopes are that Kenya is not living down to the expectations expressed by the erstwhile Zairean ruler.

Excerpt:

By Najum Mushtaq
NAIROBI, Dec 27 2007 (IPS)

Kenya&#39s presidential, parliamentary and local council polls on Thursday were far from perfect. The main opposition candidate for the presidency and favourite to win the election could not locate his name in the voters&#39 register in a constituency he has represented for the past 15 years.

In many places, Kenyans who were eager to cast their ballots found polling booths closed and election staff unprepared, even two hours after the starting time. Campaigners of a parliamentary candidate were caught bribing voters as they lined up outside a polling station, while certain aspirants had given "listening allowances" of about a dollar or more to people attending their rallies.

Yet, despite flaws in the system, moving from one polling station in Nairobi to another was to see democracy in action.

From the cosmopolitan environs of Kilimani to the more plebeian Thika Road, from the posh Westlands to the shantytowns of Kibera, voters in Kenya&#39s capital turned up early and came out in droves; even the damp weather and brief spurts of rain failed to dampen spirits. Polling stations across the East African country presented similar scenes.

The dreaded prospect of large-scale violence did not materialise. Incidents took place in the already troubled western region of Eldoret and in Nyanza province, in the south-west, where certain reports indicated that two people had been killed. Elsewhere, it was reported that three police officers had been killed in the west, while a man was also said to have been killed in Kibera, although it is unclear whether the latter was election-related. By and large, however, the polls were free of trouble.

In places where the start of voting was delayed, crowds waited patiently, with no thought of abandoning the queues. "We are here to cast votes, and even if we have to stay here another day we won&#39t leave unless the ballot is in the box," commented a voter interviewed by IPS outside the Hospital Hill Primary School in Nairobi, where balloting started two hours late.

At one of the polling stations that experienced delays, a returning officer said the ballot papers meant for his booth had been sent elsewhere by mistake. At another site, the staff arrived late. Certain election staffers were resentful about being paid some 70 dollars for about a week&#39s work. A roving clerk, who was instructing voters how to mark the complicated ballot paper, told IPS he was doing his duty in the "national cause": "What we are being paid is inadequate. The election process cannot become better organised and more efficient unless the staff is satisfied with its remuneration."

The missing AROW

The Old Kibera Primary School in Nairobi remained the focus of attention through much of the day. Situated in the Langata constitutency of Raila Odinga, the main challenger to President Mwai Kibaki, its polling staff could not spot Odinga&#39s name in the voters&#39 register, and he had to leave the school without casting his ballot.

Odinga drove straight to the Electoral Commission of Kenya&#39s offices in downtown Nairobi to register a formal protest. The matter was sorted out when he was told that he is indeed a registered voter, and that the confusion had resulted from a new procedure adopted by the commission of ordering voters to queue according to their names, in alphabetical order.

This procedure meant that the voters&#39 registers were split accordingly at different booths within a polling site. In Odinga&#39s case, many registers of voters whose surnames started with A, R, O and W were misplaced. During an impromptu press conference, a top commission officer explained that this was the result of human error, not a ploy to disenfranchise the opposition leader. Odinga, to his credit, refrained from launching a rigging tirade against the government and went back to Old Kibera to try again.

Youth come of age

During the run-up to the elections the contest had virtually become a youth versus age phenomenon. More than 40 per cent of Kenya&#39s 14.3 million voters are below 40. Surveying the long lines of voters in Nairobi one could see the predominance of young people. In the Dagoretti constituency, one of the most keenly contested seats in the capital, a 29-year old artist – John Kiarie – took on 68-year-old Beth Mugo, a symbol of the country&#39s traditional elite and niece of Kenya&#39s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta. Kiarie&#39s chances of wining are slim. But his campaign was lively and galvanised many other young people not only to stand in elections, but also make themselves count at the polling stations.

The exuberance of youth and the high degree of their participation in this election has also shaken another longstanding pattern of Kenyan politics: tribalism. Few expect a dramatic turnaround, as the country&#39s political class remains habitually attached to closed-door deals along tribal lines. But this election brought to the fore a new generation of candidates and voters who are willing to see life in Kenya beyond tribal allegiances.

Josphalt Macharia, a tour operator from Naivasha in the Rift Valley province, believes that "as more young people move to cities like Nairobi for education and employment, tribal ties will loosen in time. It will also change their political orientation. A few elections down the line, the dynamics of Kenyan politics will surely move away from its tribal base. But it will take time."

Two-horse race

Although nine hopefuls had entered the presidential contest, including a Muslim woman, the only serious challenger to Kibaki&#39s bid for a second term is his erstwhile comrade, Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). In pre-election opinion polls, Odinga led Kibaki by a thin margin.

The ODM leader is usually described as an "outsider" in a polity still dominated by the remnants of the country&#39s founding party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU). Turning 63 in January, he is also relatively young. His father was an independence hero and comrade of Kenyatta.

After studying engineering during the 1980s in what was then East Germany, Odinga became a prominent dissident against former head of state Daniel arap Moi&#39s one-party rule. He was arrested on treason charges after a failed military coup in 1982 and spent most of the next ten years in jail as a political prisoner.

In 1991, Odinga helped found the Forum for Restoration of Democracy. This grouping was instrumental in, first, abolishing the one-party system and eventually ousting KANU from power under the banner of the National Rainbow Coalition, which was led by Kibaki. Odinga played a crucial role in helping Kibaki win the presidency in 2002, through ensuring support from his Luo tribe in Nyanza.

Odinga served as a cabinet minister till 2005, but left the Kibaki government after it tried to force through an unpopular constitution. He then led his newly formed ODM to a historic victory in a referendum on the new constitution. Kibaki&#39s defeat in the 2005 referendum marked the first instance in Kenya&#39s history in which an incumbent president suffered some form of electoral defeat.

Odinga has portrayed himself as a people&#39s president and based his campaign on promises of change. A pan-Africanist whose primary instinct is to rebel against the established order, he has promised to rebuild the country&#39s infrastructure, especially the road and rail networks, and to end corruption. Other than winning friends in anti-Kikuyu tribes of western and eastern Kenya, Odinga also forged an electoral alliance with the Muslim dominated North-eastern province. His feisty image has helped him cultivate a huge following among the younger generation, which is less prone to see politics through the prism of tribal allegiance.

His nomination as ODM&#39s presidential candidate led to a split in the party that saw Kalonzo Musyoka, an even younger politician at 54, form his own faction, ODM-Kenya. Musyoka also joined the race for State House, the sprawling presidential residence in Nairobi. A born-again Christian, the ODM-Kenya leader was hoping for an election-day miracle, as his campaign failed to gather momentum during the electioneering.

For Kibaki, heading the Party of National Unity, the election result will be a litmus test of his statesmanship. He has run on the basis of his five-year record of consistent economic growth, which at a yearly five percent remains a commendable achievement. He also takes credit for doing away with Moi&#39s repressive style of politics, and providing the media with unprecedented freedoms. Yet, corruption and inefficiency of the state machinery remain the proverbial albatross around his neck.

From election to transition

More than mere personalities and political parties, at stake in Kenya&#39s elections is the future of the electoral process in this country. To a large extent, the matter of who wins or loses has become a secondary issue: what is more significant is whether Kenya can repeat the peaceful transition of power witnessed after the 2002 elections, which was a first in the nation&#39s troubled history, and a minor miracle by Africa&#39s often abysmal democratic standards.

If Kibaki loses, can he ensure a peaceful transfer of power of the kind that he benefited from in 2002? If he wins, can he display enough grace to reach out to the other side and prevent the electoral divide from spiralling into permanent political hostilities? And if the results warrant a run-off, could he avoid the temptation of employing arcane constitutional tricks of the past to keep his main adversary out of office?

From dawn to dusk on Thursday the multitudes of voters who turned out in Kenya&#39s elections passed the democratic test. Can Kibaki and the rest of the political class rise to the same level of maturity that the electorate have shown? We will know the answer in a few days. But the signs so far are auspicious.

Excerpt: