The United Nations refugee chief has appealed for a massive injection of funds to help residents in Kenya’s sprawling and overcrowded Dadaab complex, which he described as “the most difficult camp situation in the world.” Located some 90 kilometres from the border with Somalia, the three camps at Dadaab were built to house 90,000 people but today are home to more than three times that number, mostly Somalis.

More than 4,000 prisoners facing execution in Kenya had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment on Monday in the largest commutation in history, news sources reported. There have been no executions carried out in Kenya for 22 years. In a statement broadcast on the state-owned radio Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, President Mwai Kibaki said that an “extended stay on death row causes undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma, anxiety, while it may as well constitute inhuman treatment.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as disappointing Kenya's failure to investigate a bout of deadly violence after the 2007 election. Speaking in Nairobi on the first day of her African tour, Mrs Clinton urged the Kenyan authorities to end impunity. At least 1,300 people were killed in two months of violence, but the cabinet has resisted calls for a tribunal.

Health care practitioners are now performing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a process known as medicalization, which tends to reinforce and legitimize FGM, hence hindering the global effort towards its abandonment, a recent study claims. The joint research study by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Children's Fund {UNICEF} has however elicited diverse reactions from Kenyan medical professionals, with some stating that they were yet to catch any medical personnel carrying out FGM.

One thing that is very, very notable about the contentions over the Mau, particularly whether and when to evict, or not and why, is the absence of law-based arguments. The occupiers of the moral high grounds, those who have mounted the high horse, carefully avoid the law. They speak as though it actually does not exist. It is as if there are no land laws that can be used to determine various claims. And that ought to make people quite curious indeed.

Nine years since the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) was enacted, Kenya is yet to fully benefit from the legislation. Although the country’s slow pace of economic reforms and growth are largely to blame, US stringent import policies have also undermined the benefits. The Ministry of Trade says Kenya’s volume of exports to the US have been minimal. For instance, in 2006, export to the US amounted to Sh21 billion and Sh19.3 billion in 2007 against imports of Sh24.7 billion in 2006 and Sh44.5 billion in 2007.

At the community centre in Mukuru, a slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, teenagers spend hours engrossed in a video game, but they are not battling other-worldly forces with super-human weapons; instead, they are finding their way through a familiar-looking city, trying to negotiate real-life situations and learn how to avoid HIV infection.

The Kenyan cabinet has rejected prosecution of post-election violence perpetrators by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead opted for the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) as a means of national healing. After a day-long meeting at State House Nairobi, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga addressed a rare press conference where they said the TJRC Act would be amended to make it more effective.

The appointment of the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) is a welcome development, writes Bill Rutto, but what will happen with critical violations that existed before and at independence and which remain outstanding to this day?

‘The Kibaki and Raila-led regime set up in February 2008 has conned and let down Kenyans by short-changing us of our democratic aspirations and derailing our efforts at implementing good governance, sustainable economic strategies, deepening a human rights culture and rooting out corruption, crime and insecurity,‘ Onyango Oloo tells Pambazuka News. Now, says Oloo, its time for Kenyans to work together to find ways to reclaim their country from the ‘power vampires’ and remove them from office by peaceful means.

Lydiah Kemunto Bosire shares with Pambazuka News commentary on Kofi Annan’s handing in of the ‘Waki envelope’ to the International Criminal Court two weeks ago, made by contributors to the African Arguments forum. Bosire discusses the possible implications of the story for Kenya, with reference to the opinions of Daniel Branch, Daniel Waweru, Gabriel Lynch, Tim Murithi, Wanjiru Kamau-Ruternberg and Sisule Musungu. Pambazuka readers are warmly invited to participate in the debate.

Former president Moi should be arrested and prosecuted for ‘annexing and dividing the Mau Forest to his own tribe’ when he knew that it was one of Kenya’s most important water catchment areas, writes Isaac Newton Kinity, in an open letter to the country’s president and prime minister. Around 450,000 Kikuyus who lived and worked on forestry stations in the area were evicted in 1985, to make way for Kalenjin settlers under the Moi government. The Mau Forest was the source of several rivers, but after Kalenjin settlers cut down thousands of acres of trees, many of the rivers dried up and drought began ‘to hit Kenya’, says Kinity. Recognising the ecological importance of the Mau Forest, Kenya’s environment minister has now called for the eviction of Kalenjin settlers. Kinity argues that if the government intends to compensate Kalenjin settlers, it must first compensate the Kikuyu who previously inhabited the forest.

In the wake of a UN report on extrajudicial killings, the prospect of intervention by the International Criminal Court on post-election violence and the formation of a Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, Maina Kiai, former chairperson of the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, speaks to Pambazuka News’s Firoze Manji about what the future holds for Kenya. As long as politicians operate under the notion that ‘the big man makes the country’ rather than institutions, cautions Kiai, it will remain impossible for the country to end impunity without outside assistance.

Kenya's cabinet is expected to meet Monday to review a bill establishing how the masterminds of the country's post-election violence will be punished. Presidential immunity against prosecution, should Mwai Kibaki be implicated in the violence, is one of the most controversial highlights of a bill that has seen previous cabinet discussions on the matter end in a stalemate. Under the Kenyan constitution the president is immune from prosecution while in office: the bill seeks to strip away this immunity.

We the Kiamaiko Bunge la Mwananchi women social movement on this 16th day of July having examined the numerous contradictions imposed on the average Kenyan women the imposed poverty, under development and deprivation of Kiamaiko and women around the country; bearing in the mind that the rising food and other commodities prices are the direct result of increased Grand coalition government aggression against oppressed Mwananchi.

Renowned diplomat and peace maker, Ambassador Bethuel Ki plagat, has been selected to chair Kenya's Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. Nairobi lawyer Betty Murungi was named vice-chairperson of the nine-member commission in the appointments made by President Mwai Kibaki.

Kenya's private sector-backed SEACOM fibre optic cable has gone ‘live’ in five of the 11 countries that it is to connect. The 17,000-kilometre cable, linking South and East Africa to global networks through India and Europe, was commissioned in Kenya, South Africa, India, Tanzania and Mozambique simultaneously. It went live in the port city of Mombasa.

The Partnership for Change is of the considered view that over the last 17 months the citizens of Kenya have exhausted the mechanisms available to us under the national Accord Agreement to cause the Grand Coalition Government to implement the National Accord. This government acting together with Parliament has no vision, no morals and no desire or intent to uphold the constitution of the Republic of Kenya.

The handover of the names of the suspects behind Kenya’s post-elections violence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) opens an uncertain chapter in the country’s history of political violence. This development has generated a vibrant debate among Kenyans: What should accountable politics look like? Oxford Transitional Justice Research is working in partnership with Moi University and Pambazuka News to offer a space in which concerned Kenyans can come together with a range of experts, scholars, practitioners, and commentators to discuss fundamental questions about how we got here, and the strategies necessary to move the country forward.

At a recent prayer breakfast in Kenya, religious matters were pushed aside and instead gluttony was the order of the day. President Mwai Kibaki struggled to eat a whole chapatti in one go, Prime Minister Raila Odinga spilt tea down his suit and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka struggled after getting a sausage stuck in his mouth. Luckily, these were just puppets being filmed in the cramped dining room of a Nairobi home for the latest of 13 episodes of the XYZ show.