If we are to effectively tackle terrorism, there needs to be some truth-telling, historical perspective and a genuine desire to get to the heart of the beast. We must acknowledge that terrorist organisations are often a product of real or perceived injustices and are borne out of a sense of desperation. And they are often supplied with arms by the very forces that claim to be fighting them.

The United Nations is notorious for not protecting whistleblowers, despite a 2005 whistleblower protection policy, and rarely, if ever, takes disciplinary action against corrupt individuals.

Local media coverage of the 2013 Kenyan elections downplayed acts of violence and bordered on self-censorship despite the fact that social media reflected a deeply politically and ethnically divided society. The new Kenyatta government has now embarked on a charm offensive to co-opt the media

Successive Somali governments have not accounted for nearly $238 million, the bulk of which constituted bilateral assistance, according to an audit report made available exclusively to the East African.

To novelist Nuruddin Farah, his homeland city is not the ‘most dangerous in the world;’ it’s the prettiest and most colourful — once you’ve tasted its waters, you will always go back.

Even if the London Conference on Somalia hosted by the UK government last month may not have been yet another business opportunity for Western governments and companies, the timing is certainly suspect.

Somalia’s transitional administration is mired in corruption. Like other players in the lawless nation, the government has contributed to the suffering of its own people.

For more than a century, Kenya’s coastal people have been repeatedly alienated from their land and marginalised from public services, particularly education. Now they want to break away from the rest of the country.

A huge international conference is being organised in London on Somalia, but it does not have the support of the citizens. It will fail because what the ‘international community’ has failed to learn over the years is that Somalis are fiercely independent people.

What should concern Kenya is not the political and personal fate of the suspects whose charges have been confirmed by the International criminal Court, but the lives of the thousands of victims who are still nursing their wounds four years later.

Rasna Warah cautions that, if Kenyans cannot see the link between government failure and the rise of home-grown terrorism, then the military project of eliminating Al-Shabaab in the country and across the border in Somalia will go nowhere.

‘Kenyans are seen to have a “business-as-usual” approach to corruption, but a new report published by the International Peace Institute shows that our extreme tolerance of impunity is having devastating consequences and is, in fact, undermining the State’s legitimacy,’ writes Rasna Warah.

WFP has conducted an 'aggressive fundraising campaign to cover the needs of south and central Somalia till the end of the year.' But what are those needs, and who is assessing them, asks Rasna Warah.

Professor Maathai was a celebrated environmentalist, but what was equally remarkable about her was ‘her open defiance of outdated, male chauvinistic, neo-colonial and repressive attitudes and traditions’ that hindered not just women, but Kenya as a whole, writes Rasna Warah.

The global aid industry has made a core group fabulously wealthy, writes Rasna Warah.

Behind slick aid agency publicity campaigns designed to raise funds for famine in East Africa lies an aid industry that is complicit in corruption and the promotion of unaccountable government.

In the absence of a well-functioning central government, Somalia is in effect being ‘managed and controlled by aid agencies’, writes Rasna Warah. But it’s a story that is unlikely to be told by either the global news networks or the ‘aid workers whose livelihoods depend on donor money that will soon flow into Somalia via Kenya.’

Kibera, Nairobi’s most notorious slum, is now the subject of a reality TV show. Rasna Warah slams the growing fashion of 'slum tourism'.

In the wake of the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) decision not to award core funding to the Nairobi-based United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), Rasna Warah considers the implications of the cuts.

The global face of corruption is now coming under increasing scrutiny, writes Rasna Warah.