Kenya does not have a constitutional court, the Court of Appeal has declared. Eleven days ago, the Court of Appeal told High Court judge, Justice Joseph Nyamu, that the Constitution had not created a constitutional court with supervisory powers over all the other courts. Nyamu, who heads the Constitutional and Judicial Review division of the High Court, ran into trouble after he asserted that the constitutional court was mandated to inquire into alleged violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of a litigant that may arise from a decision of the Court of Appeal or the High Court.

Dear all Kenyans and friends of Kenya,

I am desperately trying to reach out to other people in the US who are concerned and outraged about the current situation in Kenya, and to see ways that I and others may help take unified action in any possible way. In that vein, I am reaching out to all Kenyans living in the US and friends of Kenya, and am proposing the idea of trying to form and expand a network of people in the US in order to establish a kind of united front to vigorously advocate for the US to play a more neutral, multilateral and transparent role in the negotiation process for peace with truth and justice in Kenya. For those who have been following the situation you will recognize the last line as the name of the coalition of Kenyan human rights and civil society organizations, "Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice," whom I think we should be showing solidarity with by amplifying their demands and statements, particularly regarding US involvement in Kenya, to leaders and media outlets here in the US by forming a "US Coalition for Peace with Truth and Justice in Kenya." An additional focus for those in the US is to raise awareness of the situation in Kenya and to educate members of the press to stop inaccurately depicting the situation as an extreme "shock," as a result of just "tribal conflict," and underestimating the US's interests and role in the situation. Also, the disproportionate affect of the humanitarian situation on specific groups must be highlighted without trivializing or sensationalizing it, particularly violence against women and children, and the disruption in the flow of essential goods and services throughout eastern Africa (especially medicines such as antidiarrheals, antibiotics, malaria meds, ARVs, etc.).

There are certainly many people and organizations in the US who are already doing great work on this, and this is not an attempt to be purposely ignorant of the great work they are doing, it is merely an effort to try to reach out and connect as many people as possible who are concerned and want to take united action on this issue. If I, like I imagine I may be, am ignorant enough to not know that such a unified network already exists, then I will immediately withdraw my proposal and humbly ask to be included in the previously established network(s). Nevertheless, there is the need for an organized listserv in order for such a campaign (if that's what it is) to stay up-to-date and to communicate effectively with each other, that is if such a listserv/group is not already established either. If no such organized group/listserv already exists then I have created a simple google group for now, but perhaps more tech savvy people have better suggestions. The name of the google group is "US Coalition for Peace with Truth and Justice in Kenya" and the email address of the group is [email][email protected] Please suggest any other better ideas, otherwise PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS WIDELY.

One initial proposed action is to encourage lots of people to submit questions to the upcoming US Presidential candidate debates to pose questions to the candidates in order to get them to publicly address and raise awareness of the situation in Kenya and propose what as President they would do to promote peace, truth and justice in Kenya, and the surrounding Horn and East of Africa (i.e., will they continue to prioritize US "national security" interests and actions of the "war on terror" in the region, or rather will they prioritize investing in community healthcare capacity, for example). Pending the response I get from people here, I will post more contact information on this. A basic idea is also for a massive US organizational sign-on letter, unless this is already underway by anybody?

I am also including people in Kenya and Kenyan organizations, including those part of "Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice," on this email and would greatly appreciate any and all comments, concerns and suggestions that you may have for us here in the US who are seeking ways to help in both the humanitarian situation and the political situation by taking account of the interests and actions of the US government and other US actors in Kenya.

Thank you all for your stern devotion and commitment to peace, truth and justice in Kenya! I am desperately eager to hear back from any and all of you.

Bahati Ntama Jacques and Beth Tuckey argue Bush's support for Rwanda through the prism of the Global War on Terror and US access to natural resources will in the long run be disastrous to peace in the DRC.

There is a common flaw in US foreign policy. In giving aid to foreign nations, the United States prioritizes its own foreign policy goals over any standards of good governance. Because this system of support ignores the realities on the ground, it ultimately backfires, undermining US long term interests and fueling instability, conflict, and violations of core human rights standards. Nowhere is this more true than in Africa. Today, President Bush supports corrupt, illegitimate regimes that will either cooperate in the Global War on Terror, provide US companies access to much sought-after natural resources, or both. If history is any indication, this infusion of wealth and military training for such self-interested gains is likely to be disastrous for the people of Africa.

A particularly good example of this is Rwanda – a country that has abused its neighboring people in the Democratic Republic of Congo with support from the United States government. President Paul Kagame will host President Bush this week. Will the leader of the most powerful country in the world have the courage to discuss Rwanda’s negative role in peace and economic development in DRC? Will he castigate Rwandan President Kagame for not providing the political space for Hutus to return to Rwanda? Likely, no. He will announce US support for peace in Congo while simultaneously pushing forward a foreign policy that favors only America’s narrow interests.

From 1996-2003, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo suffered a great deal from two wars that pitted Rwanda and its allies against the Congo. The Congolese loss was other people’s gain. According to Global Policy Forum’s Tito Dragon in DR Congo: Dirt Above Ground, Precious Metal Below, “it was the attempt to control coltan mines that was the principal, if not the only, motivation behind the US-backed 1998 occupation of part of DRC territory by Rwanda and Uganda.” In fact, in 2004, after a three-year investigation, a UN Panel of Experts implicated three major US companies for fueling war in DRC by collaborating with rebel groups trafficking coltan. United States assistance to Rwanda continues today largely due to Kagame’s willingness to be engaged in the US War on Terror; and again, the people of DRC lose.

Though he publicly denies any direct involvement, most officials agree that President Kagame funds renegade General Laurent Nkunda’s militia in DRC – a militia whose primary purpose appears to be keeping Hutu rebels away from the Rwandan border. A UN report accuses Nkunda’s Tutsi faction of some of the worst human rights abuses of any rebel group currently operating in the eastern region. Though Kagame has undoubtedly brought strong economic development to the small great lakes nation, he has failed to adequately deal with the legacy of the 1994 genocide – the strained relationship between Hutus and Tutsis.

Bush knows that Rwanda’s involvement in the armed conflict in DRC delays peace in eastern Congo, but he continues to authorize military aid to Rwanda. In 2007, the United States armed and trained Rwandan soldiers with $7.2 million from the US defense program Africa Contingent Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) and $260,000 from the International Military and Education (IMET) program. At the same time, the US is involved in facilitating peace talks between Rwanda and DRC and the various rebel groups operating in eastern Congo. Not only does arming Rwanda contradict the peace process, but it also delays the recovery of Rwanda from its 1994 genocide.

During the Cold War, the US provided military aid to African countries to counter communism. Many of those countries – Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and DRC – have now become hotspots of violence and economic failure in Africa. It is no surprise that lending arms and financial support to corrupt dictators and human rights abusers contributes to destabilization, but still the US government has yet to learn its lesson. Today, the rationale for providing military aid to countries like Rwanda is to counter terrorism; likely, the methods and outcomes will be largely the same as they were in the 1980’s.

The Department of Defense argues that by training and equipping African military forces, it will bring greater stability and legitimacy to African governments. The case for professionalizing militaries was also made during the Cold War and it was a policy that ultimately failed. It should not be used again today to justify the self-interests of the United States.

This week, President Bush has the opportunity to encourage African governments to engage peacefully and democratically with their people and with each other, but only if the Administration’s actions are seen as legitimate by African nations. Most countries have voiced a vehement ‘no’ to the creation and implementation of a new US military command for Africa (AFRICOM) and other US military activities on the continent. For the sake of countries like DRC, Mr. Bush should begin with a drawing back of his own defense policy in Africa.

*Bahati Ntama Jacques is the Policy Analyst at Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) in Washington, DC. He is Congolese.

**Beth Tuckey is the Associate Director of Program Development and Policy at Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) in Washington, DC.

***Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The Rotary Foundation announces a call for applications for the 2009-11 Rotary World Peace Fellowships (RWPF) and January and June 2009 Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies (RPCS) Program sessions. The deadline for completed applications to be submitted to The Rotary Foundation for these sessions is 1 July 2008.

Around 135 rebels captured when they attacked the Chadian capital N’djamena in early February were displayed by Chadian police on 13 February, some of whom were identified as children. "Among these prisoners there are minors,” Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, said during a press conference.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken steps to get rid of foreign rebel militia in the country. This was evidenced by a presidential order, authorising the formation of a pilot committee for the purpose. Coordinated by Congo's Foreign Affairs Minister, Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi, the committee is expected to get backing from the UN peacekeeping mission [MONUC] in the country to monitor and coordinate disarmament, demobilisation and repatriation activities of foreign fighters to their respective countries.

Chad's president has declared a nationwide state of emergency, telling his citizens that tightened controls were needed to restore order after recent attacks by an opposition alliance. Idriss Deby made the announcement in a speech broadcast on national radio and television on Thursday.

Three days each week a group of refugees, including men, women and older children, gather in a classroom in Meheba to learn ways to improve their agriculture and small businesses. With most refugees who wanted to repatriate now gone home to Angola, UNHCR and the Zambian government are working – through programmes such as the formation of agricultural cooperatives and a micro-credit scheme – to ensure that remaining refugees are gaining the knowledge and skills to become self-sufficient.

Three years ago, Bengt-Ake Johansson faced a risky road journey through rebel-infiltrated territory in northern Uganda as he prepared to set out from Kenya to deliver a gift of trucks from Sweden to UNHCR in South Sudan. He needed a police escort to get through.Last week, Johansson returned to Kenya with other colleagues from the Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SRSA) to lead another convoy of trucks from Mombasa to South Sudan, some 2,000 kilometres away. This time the danger came from inside Kenya, where post-election violence has plagued parts of the country since the beginning of the year.

With the third DRC war crimes suspect now at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the ICC Prosecutor has signalled that his work in Ituri is done. According to the Prosecutor, the arrest of Mathieu Ngudjolo now closes the first phase of investigations in the DRC. He is now turning his attention to the ongoing atrocities in the Kivus, just south of Ituri.

With the security situation easing after a wave of violence tore through Kenya following last December’s contested elections, the United Nations reported that large numbers of displaced are returning to their “ancestral homes,” potentially straining resources in the nation’s western region. The movement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is mainly occurring from central to western areas of the country, and its impact is already being felt in Western and Nyanza provinces where educational and health systems are overextended, according to the UN Country Team.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that there are up to 2 million vulnerable people in need of humanitarian aid in war-wracked Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991 and where fighting has intensified in recent months. In the capital Mogadishu, the number of people escaping the city to the poorest areas of the Horn of Africa nation has doubled to 700,000 in the last six months.

Spain's National Court on Thursday ordered the detention of 40 Rwandan military officers on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism in connection with the deaths of more than four million people in the 1990s. The victims also included six Spanish missionaries and three aid workers, who were killed in refugee camps where they worked between 1994 and 2000.

The recent ruling by Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court allowing 12 Christian converts to Islam to "re-convert" back to Christianity is a welcomed rejection to the government's policy of religious discrimination, Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said today. The two organizations urged the government to take immediate steps to correct its systematic policy of forcing converts from Islam to accept a religious identity that was not their own in order to obtain essential identification documents.

I have been a great admirer of the contemporary Kenyan literary and intellectual movement for sometime now, a movement personified in Kwani? amongst others. As a relatively young South African, I have searched with no success for an equivalent development here at home. I have been mesmerised by Wainaina’s imagination and masterly use of irony. Mukoma’s political insights which are many years older than him, I cant forget the dancing poetry of Shaila Patel. But when the election related bloodletting occurred, im afraid their wailing pens went flat. They have certainly written, they have initiated and joined the peace movement, but im afraid they haven’t said anything. Maybe that is the cost one pays for success and international glory.

Why would these great minds of our time, appear like many Desmond Tutus presiding over the TRC collective mourning ceremony? Why have they banished from their pens, incitement to liberation and the attack on the neo-colony and its degenerate democrazy (apologies Fela)?

Every time I read these idols of mine, I hear “peace”. What peace? I ask. The poor of Kibera are trapped in one of the most vicious structural violence known to humanity, every single day of their miserable existence. Haven’t we felt the bitter tears of the surviving mau mau fighters? When we were in Nairobi for the WSF last year, we were told stories of state sanctioned mass killings of the poor youth, they apparently shoot to kill even for stealing a cell phone. And we talk peace? Is it not a great miracle that some people born in Kibera reached the age of 25? But for the majority of Kenyans life after Uhuru has not been a bed of roses, we also know of the never ending killings for land and forests.

My gripe more than anything is predicated upon the spectacular failure to raise an alternative voice which is not hobbled by international NGO humanitarian discourses deeply trapped in liberal democratic appeal. I yearn for a voice which would confidently redirect the violence consuming the poor of all tribes, which is organised above by the democracy elites whose sole purpose is looting. Why I don’t hear someone talk about revolutionary violence? Why I don’t hear someone say death to Kibaki and Odinga! Unity amongst the poor! Why? Because we are now struggling for peace? Not even a little justice?

The people of Kenya has every right to chose who will rule over them, in short which elite group must come in and eat as they seat in the grand stand cheering on. That’s democracy ala our new colonisers. But surely we can warn them that they need not kill each other so that their respective leaders may eat. We have a responsibility to point out that the so called democracy is really not worth dying for, maybe we should point out that it’s a little better to die fighting for your own freedom against the tyranny of money now embodied in Kibaki and Odinga.

Please let’s stop the talk of peace, which is nothing but a call to return to the abnormal normalcy of elite rule predicated upon the perpetuation of structural violence against the poor. Here in SA, it was interesting to watch through eyes burning with tear gas and gun power, how the apartheid monster turned the terms of our liberation movement into a negotiations for peace after unleashing untold violence against the blacks using black hands like the Inkatha Freedom Party thugs (remember the misleading talk of black on black violence?). So we negotiated a peaceful transition which ensured the perpetuation of black suffering.

Am I losing my mind? It’s ok if I’m, because reading Wainaina’s latest missive in the mail and guardian about those bloody Tanzanians, I have good reason to believe I’m in good company…

Things are calmer in much of Kenya after a week of national hell. In Kibera, Kangemi, Dandora and all the burning slums, people are trying to get back to work and to find food. The roads in and out of Eldoret are open now -- although it is there, and in other parts of the Rift Valley, where things remain volatile.

A “third force” for peace is gathering around honest brokers like ambassador Bethwell Kiplagat, a gentle man of great empathy and intellect, trusted by all in Kenya; retired general Opande -- known in military circles around the world as a formidable UN peacekeeper; and retired general Sumbeiwo, a man of honour, trusted as a mediator by both sides in the Sudan conflict. At times like this these three men are the most valuable real estate in Kenya.

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A truck packed with 40 children was intercepted in the central Mozambican province of Manica this week, sparking concern over increased child trafficking and the urgent need for effective legislation to address the problem. "All the children are now in the protective custody of social welfare authorities in Chimoio [in Manica Province]. While investigations are underway, authorities have been trying to contact their parents," the UN Children Fund's (UNICEF) Thierry Delvigne-Jean told IRIN.

Zambia's open-door investment policy is coming under criticism from rights activists for passing on the real cost of development to the poor, who are being evicted to make way for the new prestige projects. Campaigners describe the victims as 'internally displaced persons' (IDPs) - a description usually applied to people who flee to another part of the country as a result of conflict or disaster.

Ethiopia experienced a record harvest during the meher season that runs from June and October but pockets of poor food production across the country have still left millions of people needing food assistance, according to a food security update. Citing the Somali region in particular, the update issued by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) on 6 February stated that poor rains during the deyr season, from October to November, exacerbated extreme food insecurity in parts of the region.

A traditional "gacaca" court on Tuesday sentenced a doctor to 15 years in prison for his role in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, right groups confirmed. Theoneste Niyitegeka, who had wanted to join the country's presidential race in 2003, was first acquitted in October. Doctor Niyitegeka was arrested after judgment had been handed down.