The Muslim Human Rights Forum (MHRF) is demanding action by the government of Kenya on behalf of a Kenyan national detained without trial in Saudi Arabia since September 2007. The Kenyan Abdullahi Adan Sheikh Ali, 23, a fourth year student at Madina University was detained at Jeddah Airport by immigration officials who told him they wanted to question him about his visa. Efforts by his family in Kenya to establish his whereabouts only bore fruits in December last year when he called to say that he was being held in a jail in Riyadh.

Muslim leaders in Kenya's North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV. The decision was made after a recent meeting on the theme of "Islam and Health", attended by more than 60 Muslim scholars and teachers in the provincial capital of Garissa.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/logos/oxfam-150x100.jpg

Oxfam is inviting applications for the post of:
Regional Campaigns Manager (Oxfam GB)
Nairobi, Kenya
£24,100 – £32,640 net pa + attractive benefits

Mount Elgon residents have begun disclosing the atrocities meted on them by a criminal gang that has been terrorising them before the joint military and police ´Operation Okoa Maisha´ was launched early this year. The Saboti land Defence Force militia employed methods of torture reminiscent of West Africa in the 90s, including chopping off their victims´ ears on flimsy accusations like drunkenness, cutting down maize stalks, refusing to join the SLDF or paying membership fee.

When Jacinta Marete discovered that she was pregnant, she was in her first year in one of the public universities in the country. Having been among the chosen few who secure themselves a place in these institutions of higher learning, her dream of becoming a pharmacist was slowly shaping up.

Kenya’s draft bill to establish a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission is flawed and should be amended, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch urged parliament to revise the bill before it becomes law. “The national dialogue and reconciliation process was supposed to create institutions that can address Kenya’s historical injustices and bring criminals to book for their crimes,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

This is an exhibition being organized by Communion and Liberation (CL), an
international Catholic organisation that has as part of its objectives the
promotion of culture and education. In Kenya, CL is affiliated to AVSI
Foundation, Companionship of Works Association (CoWA), St Kizito
Vocational Training Institute and Cardinal Otunga Secondary School among
others.

The Independent Review Commission (IREC) was established to assess a number of aspects of the 2007 General Elections in Kenya. As part of its mandate, it is required to examine the conduct of the Electoral Commission of Kenya and make recommendations aiming at improving the fure electoral process in the country. To assist the Commission in its endeavour, IREC wants to apply a well qualified electoral researcher.

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem asks the question: Do we expect too much from the media when we ourselves are failing African societies?

May 3 was International Press Freedom Day. Journalists make their living by poking their noses into other people’s affairs but are not very good at looking at themselves, their institutions, their own practice and how they advance or hinder the values of freedom of expression that their profession is built on.

I was at the Goethe Institute in the City of Nairobi to hear journalists celebrate the day and talk about the various challenges facing the Media in Kenya. A very interesting documentary film ‘Uncovering Kenya Media’ produced by one of Kenya’s veteran Pan Africanist photojournalists, Khamis Ramadan was screened. The film looked at the unsung contributions of photojournalists. In general African journalists are badly paid and ill treated by their employers, governments and the wider society.

But photojournalists are even more badly treated because media houses and the wider society do not recognise their real value. In Africa they are still seen as poor cousins of the ‘main stream’. Yet in this age of multimedia the image is increasingly more important than the written word. What people can see or hear are more believable than what they can read. How many times have you heard people affirm the truth of their position by saying: ‘I saw it on telly’ or ‘I saw the pictures with my own eyes’? These are more validating than even ‘I heard it with my ears’ that used to put stamp of authority on radio. In the order of things ‘I read it’ is less affirming because many people still can neither read nor write. And even among those who are ‘literate’ many will read more ‘pictures’ than the text!

The film was both a celebration of the media and also an auto-critique by practitioners. There was a sad illustration of both the courage and danger of being a working journalist in Kenya is the case of journalist who was handicapped escaping Police arrest in the bloody days of Moi/KANU dictatorship and was bedridden for many years. He died after the film was concluded. It raises the question of how those in power treat the media but it is also about how journalists treat one of their own.

Kenyan media has seen a rebirth in the past few years where acts of courage and hope triumph over adversity. But the political glasnost in the post Moi era has its own dangers and as the society became more polarised the media itself is caught up in the conflicts. It is not just an impartial reporter but also active partisans.

There was a very interesting exchange of views after the film. Sometimes the exchanges were recriminatory, at times heated and impassioned but mostly educative throughout. The discussions were led by an impressive panel of experienced media persons including my UN Millennium Campaign colleague, Sylvia Mudasia, who in a previous life was a frontline journalist in both Kenya Times and The Nation and also David Matende (Editor/Publisher), Mitch Odera (Editor/Media Trainer) and Kabando wa Kabando, an MP and Assistant Minister in the Grand Coalition government.

Most of the interventions, understandably, focused on the role of the media in the recent political conflicts and violence that unfolded in Kenya consequent to the inconclusive nature of the Presidential elections and its mismanagement by the Kenya Electoral Commission. There were all kinds of questions and even more comments. There was a set directed at the role of the media in the recent conflicts. Did the media foresee the calamity? Could they have done anything to avert it? Did they contribute to it? Did they fan the embers of ethnicity and xenophobia?

Another set of questions and comments were about the professional role of the Media. Is the media free in Kenya? Is it performing according to the highest of professional core values? Is it controlled by the powerful? Is it too beholden to the rich and other vested interests? Is it cowed by government? Does the public trust it? Does it reflect the truth?

There were as many people on either side of these questions as there were people in the audience and all argued their cases passionately.

What I found very interesting is the assumption implied in all the condemnations, criticisms or praises of the media that we expect the media to be above conflicts, prejudices, sectarianism and partisanship in its discharge of its functions. Yet the journalist, the TV or Radio producer, the radio announcer, the anchor woman or man, the photographer, the subeditor, the editor, including this columnist and other columnists are all human beings and living in the same environment as their readers, listeners or viewers.

In any polarised society would it not be expecting too much to believe that the media will not be part of it? They are also citizens and being in the media should not deny them the right to political participation. What can be legitimately expected is for the media to discharge its duties in as non-partisan way as possible.

As for being political we are all political whether we state so openly or not. Even when many feign lack of interest in politics it does not mean that they do not have a political position. Not having a position is also a political position! Politics affects you whether you are interested in it or not. The Media is both a source of information and disinformation depending on the social, ideological or political perspectives of the persons involved. Objectivity itself is an inter-subjective process mediated by education, skill, personal integrity or lack of it, values, cultural norms, and the power relations between the journalist and his or her employers and between them and the powerful in society be they government, corporate leaders, advertisers, their audience, etc.

If we are not angels ourselves, it is unrealistic to expect that our media will be peopled by saints because like governments a people get the media they deserve. They report as much as they reflect their society and the world around them, its contradictions, its highest and lowest of values and sometimes the plainly mediocre.

The election conflicts exposed the various fissures in Kenya long neglected by a self satisfied elite and complacent public. It is not only media that should engage in retrospection about its role in the conflict. The whole of Kenya needs the honesty to confront their not so hidden but conveniently ignored socio-economic and political demons. No institution is neutral. The religious establishments failed woefully in its moral duty to speak truth to power.

But they were not alone as many leaders in the arts, academia, professional associations, the NGOs/ CSOs, and respected public intellectuals failed the same moral test. It is convenient to blame the media but every Kenyan and to some extent all of us who live in the country need to ask where we stood / stand on the issues that divided / divide the country. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

*Dr Tajudeen Abdul Raheem writes this syndicated column as a concerned Pan Africanist.

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/370/48046camp.jpgThe National Internally Displaced Persons Network of Kenya is deeply concerned with recent moves by the Government of Kenya to forcibly close IDP camps across the country in violation of the international Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and basic human decency.

Operation "Rudi Nyumbani" seems to be based on no policy or legal framework but instead uses the force of the provincial administration to prematurely close the IDP camps. It aims at solving the problems of displacement by simply forcing people back to their homes:

1) without honoring legal obligations to compensation;

2) without providing adequate security and;

3) without allowing time for some reconciliation to take place.

The National IDP Network asks that the Government of Kenya recognize its responsibility to protect these victims of violence including many children. According to the guiding principles, which it has agreed to in the Great Lakes Pact, the government is also required, to give the displaced choices and alternatives to returning to the site of very recent trauma. By closing the camps the government is in effect forcing people to return or face starvation, disease and perhaps home in a slum.  Such scenarios are likely to breed more poverty and recruits for gangs and future violence. Few seem to remember that Mungiki was a product of the 1991-92 violence and that we are in danger of magnifying and multiplying such groups if we do not deal with both the sites of violence and the trauma and plight of the displaced in a comprehensive manner.

It should also be noted that a number of those IDPs who have agreed to be taken back to such places as Kuresoi have experienced threats, violence and no services. At least one man has committed suicide on return, and many have literally returned by foot to the camps. In Nakuru, the site of one of the largest camps the government discontinued water five days ago to the camp causing much distress and the potential outbreak of disease. Residents have been forced to send children out to collect water and tomorrow they will bury a child killed by a car on one desperate mission to collect water.  This is no way to treat victims of violence who are already traumatized.

We are asking concerned citizens and friends of Kenya to take urgent action:

- Ask the Kenya Red Cross and international partners to end any complicity in forced returns. Water must be restored to the Nakuru camp immediately. The Kenya Red Cross can be e-mailed at [email][email protected] or texted at 722-206958 or 733-333040

- Ask the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights to investigate and monitor the ongoing Resettlement and camp closures and to demand that the government recognize the Guiding Principles as the legal framework for dealing with IDPs. Commissioner Maina Kiai can be reached at [email][email protected]

- Ask the government to create an IDP policy that includes some alternatives, which could be in the form of reinstatement of salaries for displaced government employees, monetary compensation, trauma counseling and help in individual relocation choices. Some IDPs have also suggested that they enter into temporary farming arrangements on underutilized land until reconciliation and security can be restored.

- Ask the Government to recognize that some IDPs will prefer to relocate in other parts of the country including Nairobi to do business rather than return. This must be respected and the Ministry of Special Programmes must work with the Ministry of Lands to find alternatives as well as temporary farming arrangements for those who do not wish to return. Finally, urge them to restore water to the Nakuru camp immediately.

*Dr. Naomi Shaban can be texted at 722814412.

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

A major new partnership has been launched to provide smallholder farmers and small agricultural enterprises with the financing they need to break out of poverty and build viable businesses. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), in partnership with Equity Bank Limited, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture signed an agreement for a loan facility of US$50 million (3 billion Kenyan shillings) to accelerate access to affordable financing for 2.5 million farmers and 15,000 agricultural value chain members such as rural input shops, fertilizers and seed wholesalers and importers, grain traders and food processors.

The National Internally Displaced Persons Network of Kenya is deeply concerned with recent moves by the Government of Kenya to forcibly close IDP camps across the country in violation of the international Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and basic human decency. Operation "Rudi Nyumbani" seems to be based on no policy or legal framework but instead uses the force of the provincial administration to prematurely close the IDP camps.

About half the internal refugees left after Kenya's post-election violence have been resettled this week and the remaining 70,000 should be home within a month, Kenya's government said on Thursday. "It's a logistical challenge. The numbers that want to go back home are higher than the transport available," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said in a progress report on a resettlement programme that started on Monday.

What links employment and poverty? This International Poverty Centre paper examines the links between poverty and unemployment, underemployment, employment and labour earnings in Kenya. It finds that poor workers need short-term social protection and all workers need an effective, long-term and employment-focused development strategy. The paper simulates the potential impact of two programmes designed to provide income support to poor households: a cash-transfer programme based on the number of school-age children, and a job creation programme.

Thousands of Kenyans who dropped out of HIV treatment programmes in January as a result of the country's post-election violence are gradually returning to clinics and the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that help prolong their lives.

When Bishop James Otieno Okombo revealed he was HIV-positive in 1996, his archbishop summarily dismissed him, calling him a sinner and a disgrace to his church. "He [the archbishop] called me before a church leaders' conference and told me to repent; to denounce the sins that led to me getting infected," Okombo told a meeting of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) last week. "They took off my ceremonial attire - the collar, shirt and gown, and the cross - and sent me home."

Along the Nakuru-Eldoret road, the charred remains of homes and businesses scar the picturesque landscape of Kenya's Rift Valley province and serve as a reminder of two months of violence that rocked the nation early this year. The calm that is typical of most rural settings belies the suffering experienced by thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) since fleeing their homes in January and February.

Kenya needs to find another $300m to pay for the expanded coalition cabinet formed after a power-sharing deal. Finance Minister Amos Kimunya says he may be forced to shift funding from vital programmes like resettling the displaced to pay for new ministries.

I had been out of journalism school for barely two weeks when Julia Opoti, a friend and an editor at Kenya Imagine, a popular online discussion forum for Kenyans, sent a text message to my cell phone. My name, she wrote, had been the subject of another online forum. "Hey, did you know that there is a whole thread about you on Mashada?" the message read.

Since the January post election violence and subsequent mediation and resultant national accord by the political elites there continues massive appeals on reconciliation by the grand coalition government behind the scenes the government has and continues to engage in massive infringement of fundamental rights of historical proportions never witnessed before on the civilian population in Mount Elgon district and surrounding areas.