In early April, Journalists for Justice,
a non-governmental project on media, commissioned Ipsos Synovate to
conducted focus group discussions across Kenya to assess the needs of
victims and survivors of the post-election violence of 2007/08. I
attended these discussions.
For each
area, there were two groups, one for men and another for women. What
followed were the most heart wrenching narrations, graphic illustrations from a group of people politicians dared to claim have moved on.
One
by one, survivors recounted the events of 2008, before the elections,
during and after. The two hours that were allocated for the focus group
discussions seemed completely insufficient to fully address and express
the sort of needs that the survivors who were gathered felt were
imperative.
At times, the
conversation would get so charged with emotion that it felt like one
could cut open the air and hate and anger would pour out.
DIMINISH GRAVITY
While
there may indeed be some victims who have forgiven their tormentors, it
is in general a completely inaccurate statement that any victim of
politically instigated violence in Kenya has simply “moved on.”
Actually,
many victims have been unable to recover in any form, primarily because
the government and its state agencies have implicitly failed to provide
any sort of humanitarian assistance or restitution towards their
recovery after the events of 2007/08.
This
egregious state of affairs is the salient factor behind two public
interest cases filed at the High Court of Kenya. The first case is a
petition in which eight survivors of SGBV and 4 civil society
organizations are suing the Attorney General and 5 other senior
government officials for failing to protect them and provide assistance
during the PEV of 2008.
The second
case is a constitutional application in which Internally Displaced
Persons are seeking restitution from the court because the government,
they assert, had provided almost no assistance whatsoever to nearly
314,000 IDPS despite various claims by Cabinet Secretary for Devolution
and Planning Anne Waiguru that all registered Internally Displaced
Persons had been re-settled.
It
appears the political objective of the Jubilee coalition may be to
diminish the gravity of the situation as regards the victims and
survivors of the 2008 PEV, and to challenge the credibility of the cases
at the International Criminal Court based on that erasure of victims.
The general logic behind this was “if there are no victims or if the victims have moved on then the cases have no merit.”
The
condition of the victims remains so dire, that in a letter to the
Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons
at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Common
Legal Representative for Victims in Case 1 at the ICC, Mr. Fergal
Gaynor, urged Dr. Chaloka Beyani to call upon the government in the
strongest terms possible to meet their obligations towards IDPs (see
download below).
For seven years, the government of
Kenya has wholly ignored the plight of 314,000 IDPS from the
post-election violence, those of whom were considered “integrated”.
By
integration what the government means is that these IDPs were
temporarily at the IDP camps after which they were transported to what
was considered to be their “ancestral homes.”
For
thousands of Luo, Luhya and Kisii people this meant that they were
transported to the Western and Nyanza regions of Kenya and dumped at
market centres, churches and other public places.
Many
of these IDPs had not visited these areas in years if at all. After
this relocation by government, no further assistance was provided to
these people.
As a result of the
government’s actions, the ethnic cleansing objectives set out by militia
and politicians who instigated the post-election violence were
successfully accomplished.
There are
now entire regions of Kenya previously considered hotspots for violence
in which you will not find any member of other ethnic communities,
parts of Kenya where “foreigners” are not able to live.
INCONSISTENT FIGURES
In its recommendations on displaced persons in its 2008 report,
Human Rights Watch stated that the Government of Kenya should “ensure
that internally displaced persons are protected from further violence
regardless of their ethnicity and location, and ensure that the
fundamental and social and economic rights of all those displaced by
recent and previous events are met, including through equitable access
to food, health, and education services.”
In his State of the Nation address presented before Parliament on March 27th 2014, President Uhuru Kenyatta asserted that:
“In September 2013, the government began the implementation of a cash payment programme for all pending cases of IDPs that had not been resettled so far, a total of 8298 households. A total of 777 have received cash payments of Sh400000 per household, totalling Sh3.3 billion. The exercise continues. This settlement was followed by a concerted effort by government that focused on peace building among communities.”
The most
noticeable inconsistency in this statement is the fact that the figures
mentioned by the President do not add up. 777 households receiving
Sh400,000 each comes to Sh310,800,000 and not Sh3.3billion. The
difference represents a massive shortfall of 2,989,200,000.
Further, one cannot tell which IDPs the President is referring to, whether they are Mau evictees or post-election violence IDPs.
There
is a clear lack of political will to provide any form of justice to
victims of post-election violence, and along with this, the decision to
churn propaganda concerning the situation of the victims only causes
further harm.
There seems to be no
end to the victimization of the survivors of the post-election violence
by government. Given this situation, it is indeed quite necessary to
turn to litigation on behalf of the victims in order to seek what is
their constitutional right.
Twitter: @bettywaitherero
No comments:
Post a Comment