Nairobi's Kenyatta University has opened a campus in the north-east town of Dadaab and courses will be open to Kenyan citizens and refugees living in the nearby refugee complex, the world's biggest with almost half-a-million people. UNHCR officials working in Dadaab attended the formal opening of the tertiary education facility, which will welcome its first students in January for diploma, undergraduate and master's courses in subjects such as finance, marketing, project management, education, public administration, community mobilization, peace and conflict studies.

The UK government is bracing itself for thousands of legal claims from people who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated during the final days of the British empire after the high court in London ruled that three elderly Kenyans detained and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion have the right to sue for damages. The court rejected claims that too much time had elapsed since the seven-year insurgency in the 1950s, and it was no longer possible to hold a fair trial.

An outbreak of cholera along the Kenya-Somalia border has left dozens dead and many more sick, according to local residents, aid workers and government officials. 'We have recorded nine deaths of cholera patients at our health facilities in the past three weeks, and 89 cases have been diagnosed at different settlement locations close to the border areas,' Mohamed Sheikh, director of public health in Kenya's North Eastern Province, told IRIN.

Nearly a quarter of Kenyans expect a presidential vote in March to be marred by post-election violence, an opinion poll showed, raising fears of a repeat of unrest in 2007/8 when more than 1,200 people were killed after a disputed ballot. Kenya's 4 March poll will be closely watched and any serious violence is likely to be viewed dimly by the United States which has urged Kenya to hold free and fair elections and to be a role model for Africa.

The majority of Kenyans have confidence in pro gay Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga and his team of judges in the judiciary according to a poll. The survey conducted by Infotrak Research and Consulting found out that 70 per cent of those polled have confidence in Mutunga. Mutunga’s pro-gay activism began with his writings under the pen name Cabral Pinto and has recently said that he believes the Supreme Court would decide on the issue of gay rights and same sex marriage in Kenya.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office has expressed frustration over the slow pace at which the government has adopted in cooperating with The Hague based court. The prosecutor’s office wrote to Attorney General Githu Muigai asking the State to hasten its promise to deliver certain information to the ICC. 'The slow pace of processing these requests is a source of frustration,' Mr Phakiso Mochochoko, Head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation said in the letter.

Striking doctors have accused the government of failing to seek an end to their salary demands, saying it had not responded to their proposal on a return-to-work deal. The chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacist and Dentists Union Dr Victor Ng’ani said their mediator, the Kenya Medical Association had sent the recommendations on Friday, but the government did not respond. In the document, the striking doctor’s recommended the forming of a sub-committee to convert a task force report on improvement of health infrastructure, into a policy paper and the absorption of self-sponsored registrars into government.

Two Kenyan journalists who claim to have discovered that genocide fugitive, the Rwandan millionaire financier Felicien Kabuga, is continuing to find a safe haven in Kenya, have fled Nairobi following death threats.

Two mass graves have been discovered in Kenya's coastal Tana Delta region, the number and identities of the bodies in the graves are unknown, police say. The discovery of the graves comes a week after at least 38 people were shot, hacked and burnt to death after two tribes fought over land and water in the same area. The graves were located in Kilelengwani village, the epicentre of fighting that has left 100 people dead in the last three weeks, including nine police officers.

The Segeju, a minority community at the Kenyan coast, has undergone forced assimilation perpetrated by the government over the years and is now in serious danger of losing its culture and language. The political consequences are there for all to see.

A coalition of organisations is to submit an alternative report to the UN Human Rights Committee to inform its review of Kenya’s Third Periodic Report at its 105th Session (9 - 27 July 2012) on the implementation of the Provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in relation to torture. The report seeks to highlight the prevalent incidences of torture and related human rights violations in Kenya as serious concerns remain in this area. The overall conclusion is that whilst Kenya has endeavoured to include the principles of the ICCPR in its newly promulgated Constitution of 2010 and legislative framework, there continue to be important legislative and administrative gaps that still provide challenges towards full implementation of the ICCPR as specified in subsequent chapters.

In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations. Mohamed Ahmed, a former journalist for the Ajrass Elhuriya newspaper, which was closed in July 2011, is one of them. 'I have been sitting under the trees for a year and a half because the government closed my newspaper and other newspapers, that consider me to be opposed to the government, are afraid to hire me.'

Recent deadly clashes in Kenya stem from widespread economic frustration, chronic impunity and the ambitions of politicians seeking office, according to analysts and activists. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay noted, the timing of the latest clashes on the coast is alarming. 'In Kenya, the recent inter-communal violence in the Tana River District, during which dozens were killed, including a large number of children and women, is a grim reminder of the 2007-08 events,' she said earlier this week, referring to the killings and displacement that followed the country’s last presidential poll.

The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation’s Justice and Reconciliation in Africa programme has released a new Policy Brief entitled ‘Reconciling Kenya: Opportunities for constructing a peaceful and socially cohesive nation’. The Brief forms part of an ongoing project focused on promoting national cohesion and reconciliation in Kenya, which will be jointly implemented by the IJR, the Kenyan National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden over the next two years. The project pieces together the initiatives taken in Kenya towards reconciliation since the post-election violence in 2007/2008 and gives recommendations to different actors on the way forward to consolidate national cohesion and reconciliation.

Lack of adherence to the full course of Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) treatment is threatening the effectiveness of the drug recommended as first-line treatment for uncomplicated malaria in countries where the disease is endemic, according to recent studies. In Siaya district of western Kenya, where malaria is particularly prevalent (38 per cent incidence in 2010), a study revealed that only 47 per cent of participants reported completing the given doses.

Tribesmen have attacked a village in southeastern Kenya, torching homes and sparking clashes that killed at least 38 people, in the latest round of tit-for-tat ethnic violence to plague the area, officials said. The vendetta between the Pokomo farming community and their Orma pastoralist neighbours already left 52 dead last month in Kenya's worst tribal killings in years.

A Kenya court has jailed the country’s former permanent secretary of Kenya’s Tourism Ministry Rebecca Nabutola and the former Kenya Tourist Board Managing Director Achieng Ong’ong’a after they were convicted of corruption. Chief Magistrate Lucy Nyambura sentenced Nabutola to four years in jail while Ong’ong’a was given three years jail after both were found guilty 'of conspiracy to defraud the government of 8.9 million shillings (about $106,000).'

On 5 September 2012, AFRA-Kenya officially launched a documentary film that can easily be described as the first of its kind. The screening of 'I am Mary' was done at the Inter News offices, I & M towers in Nairobi. It is the story of Mary, a lesbian woman who volunteers with one of the GALCK member groups, Minority Women in Action (MWA) and an active participant in the fight for human rights for LGBTI persons in Kenya.

A presidential aspirant is among dozens of influential politicians and businessmen who own land on which slums in parts of Nairobi sit. The slum dwellers are going to court this week to lay claim to the land on which they have lived for years citing public interest. In what promises to be an epic judicial battle between the title holders and the slum dwellers, the group will also be claiming that the titles to these plots are no longer valid.

This report by the Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK) examines the policy and practice of Kenya’s refugee protection framework. Although much has been written on the situation in the Dadaab camps, there has been no holistic examination of the legal and policy backdrop to refugee protection in Kenya. The purpose of the study, therefore, is to establish the range of rights to which refugees and asylum-seekers in Kenya are entitled under national law (as well as international and regional legal frameworks), and to identify and assess the current implementation gaps.