Wednesday, February 06, 2008
UN chief to send top UN humanitarian official to Kenya
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced plans to dispatch his top humanitarian official to Kenya, where more than 300,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence which has torn through the East African nation following last December’s disputed elections.
“With our partners, we have been able to meet the initial basic needs of displaced populations, totalling around 310,000 IDPs [internally displaced persons] spread over 192 sites in the western and central provinces,” Mr. Ban told reporters after briefing a closed meeting of the Security Council today on his recent visit to Africa. “I am going to dispatch Mr. John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to look after these issues.”
Annan calls for new laws
Parliament will be required to legislate some proposals from the ongoing negotiation, former UN secretary-general, Mr Kofi Annan, has said. Annan, who is the lead mediator, said Parliament would be called upon to debate and entrench some of the recommendations into the Constitution once the negotiations are complete. Annan also challenged the private sector to join hands and ensure the proposals are implemented to create strong national institutions. “The issues cannot be tackled by political leaders alone. You must keep your voices high and loud,” Annan told over 200 chief executive officers during a forum at a city hotel, in Nairobi. “We have only one Kenya and we should come together and straighten it,” he said.
Disputed election too hot for rivals to handle
Finally, the hotly disputed presidential votes tally, responsible for the post-election falling out which touched off mayhem on a scale never witnessed before in independent Kenya, found its way to the mediation talks table. “It was too hot,” Mr Kofi Annan, the former UN chief tasked with brokering a deal out of the crippling impasse, declared soon after adjourning the afternoon session.
So high strung was the afternoon sitting that the respected Ghanaian mediator conceded that he could not proceed without the assistance of former South African First Lady Mrs Graca Machel and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa — both of who were unavailable. They began on the presidential election dispute by looking at the state of affairs now and how to resolve the problem. Proper talks, however, begin today.
Militia behind post-poll violence, say Police
A well-organised militia is behind the violence in which more than 20 people have been killed along the Borabu-Bureti border, Nyanza police chief has said. Mr Anthony Kibuchi said the police were investigating the militia to find out who funded it. The PPO said it was “unusual” for the militia to stage sporadic raids along the border despite heavy presence of security officers. “The militia seems undeterred and causes mayhem with impunity. We are investigating who is behind them and stern measures will be taken as we dismantle fighters,” said the PPO.
He said although normalcy was returning along the border, the raiders struck at Chebilat trading centre at dawn, attacked residents and burnt business premises and homes yesterday. The attackers also drove away herds of cattle. The PPO said an operation mounted by Rift Valley and Nyanza provincial security teams was investigating those financing the skirmishes.
Keep the army off, regional bloc pleads
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region has warned that the military should not intervene in the political crisis. Ms Liberata Mulamula, the conference executive secretary, on Tuesday opposed last week’s proposal by Rwandan President Paul Kagame that the army be used to quell the unrest. Mulamula, who is in the country to support peace efforts, said dialogue among rival parties was the best way to finding a solution. She said: “Anything can be achieved through dialogue. The military is not a solution.”
The military had been called in to help the police to bring order, especially on roads. Mulamula met ODM leaders at the party headquarters in Nairobi. She is expected to visit State House, Nairobi, today. Mulamula said the conference was concerned about the political crisis in Kenya. She will also meet the negotiators in the Kofi Annan-led talks. She urged the Government to adhere to the 11-member States’ 2006 Nairobi Pact on security and accountability.
The conflict, she said, was not just a Kenyan affair, but would also affect the Great Lakes region. “When Kenya sneezes, its neigbours catch flu. In my own house, we have been unable to cook in the past one week because we can’t get gas,” she said. The conference, which was established in 2004 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, deals with peace and stability in the region. It was formed after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which claimed about a million lives.
East African Standard
Violence slowing down humanitarian effort
Roadblocks and violence across much of western Kenya are putting a strain on efforts to assist hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs), according to relief workers. “On 14 January, one of our trucks, carrying 17 tonnes of vegetable oil for IDPs, was looted in Burnt Forest [in Rift Valley Province],” Peter Smerdon, senior public information officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN. “Then on 28 January three of our trucks were stoned; one of the trucks was looted of some of its corn soya cargo.” Another three WFP trucks heading for the western city of Kisumu only managed to reach their destination after security escorts guided them through numerous roadblocks
MorePublic Statement Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation
Goal:
To ensure that the National Dialogue and Reconciliation is carried out in a continuous and sustained manner towards resolving the political crisis arising from the disputed presidential electoral results as well as the ensuing violence in Kenya, in line with the agreement between His Excellency Mwai Kibaki and Honourable Raila Odinga, as publicly announced on 24th January and reaffirmed on 29th January 2008 at County Hall in Nairobi.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Gang infiltrates Kenya police
A quiet rebellion and near-total collapse of the chain of command has exposed Kenya’s police force as incapable of dealing with the growing national crisis in the country, amid growing fears that it has also been infiltrated by the outlawed pro- government Mungiki sect. Speaking to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity following the chilling murder on last Tuesday of an opposition MP, a senior police inspector and an officer in the criminal investigations department admitted that all was not right in the police force.
Annan: Kenya solution not about Kibaki or Raila
Mediator Kofi Annan has warned that a resolution of Kenya’s disputed presidential poll will not be about individuals as the parties begun discussing crucial political issues today. Speaking when he met company chief executives before today’s session of the talks started, Mr Annan said the mediation process between the Government/Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement will focus on building of strong institutions and not on individuals.
The Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation team which he is facilitating will be working on possibilities of coming up with a whole package whose key pillars will be land and constitutional reforms as well as ways and means to fight poverty.
Child abuse and cheap labour at IDP camps
The woes of families displaced by the recent wave of violence in Nakuru and its surroundings have assumed a new, but sad twist.The Standard learnt that the camps scattered across the town have become sources of cheap labour and marriages targeting minors. Underage girls were being lured out of the camps with a promise of well paying jobs, but end up as house girls or victims of arranged marriages.
An officer in charge of Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs) camps, Mr Jesse Njoroge, confirmed that they have rescued 31 underage girls from early marriages and cheap labour. “Some desperate parents even confessed receiving money from people in exchange for their daughters,” said Njoroge. Some of the girls, he said, were offered accommodation by ‘Good Samaritans’ only to end up as house helps.
Crisis as IDPs arrive in Kisumu
Kisumu is facing a fresh humanitarian crisis after hundreds of displaced people arrived at the lakeside town shortly after midnight.The 800 passengers, who were transported by a fleet of buses, were yesterday hosted at the St Stephen’s Cathedral Church compound in Milimani estate. The victims said a similar number of people were on their way to the town. Many were due to travel to far-flung districts in Nyanza while the rest were headed to Western and Rift Valley provinces. “We left them boarding buses in Naivasha and hope that they will arrive safely because the roads are not safe. They are barricaded with boulders and bonfires,” a victim, Ms Rose Atieno, said. Hungry babies wailed as their mothers requested well-wishers to bring them milk.
Groups call to protect people in Kenya, not corporate flower farms
Public interest organizations in Canada, Europe, Kenya, and the UnitedStates have called on the international community to help the people suffering from violence in the LakeNaivasha region of Kenya, not the global industrial flower farms that exploit the lake and its people. The groups released a new report highlighting the destructive practices of the flower farms that dominate the region. “The farms surround Lake Naivasha. They deplete its waters and poison them with pesticides,” said Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians. “They are sowing the seeds of economic and environmental devastation that, unless stopped, inevitably will yield a harvest of poverty, water deprivation, and violence.”
Vernacular radio blamed for fuelling hatred
Vernacular radio stations that air comments referring to communities as “baboons,” “weeds”, or “animals of the west” are being singled out as a partial cause to the ethnic bloodletting in Kenya. The messages are rarely direct calls to violence but are laced with cultural references that are given legitimacy when a station broadcasts them, says Strategic Research executive director Caesar Handa, who has been monitoring the airwaves after the election.
Annan’s rapid diplomacy confounds sceptics
Can former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, Africa’s most decorated diplomat, deliver a resolution to the Kenya crisis? After a few days of sittings, all indications are that the mediation talks to end the post-election conflict have started on a positive note. Initially, hopes were dashed when it emerged that the protagonists had chosen a number of hardliners to the parley — including ODM strongman William Ruto and Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua from the PNU side. Pundits predicted a protracted affair characterised by intransigence and hostile manoeuvring by the representatives of President Mwai Kibaki and his rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Mystery of bodies dumped in mortuary
Mystery surrounds the dumping of six mutilated bodies in a mortuary. According to sources at the Central Provincial General Hospital mortuary in Nyeri, the police from Kiganjo, a few kilometres from the town, took the bodies to the mortuary last weekend.They were marked unknown. Three of the bodies were burnt, while the others had deep wounds inflicted with sharp objects. The source said mortuary administrators were waiting for approval from the Hospital Superintendent, Dr Victor Muyembe, before they could dispose of the bodies.
On his part, the doctor said he was waiting for a report from the police about the unidentified bodies. But Nyeri OCPD, Mr Limbitu Kirunya, denied that the police had dumped bodies at the mortuary. “You will excuse me for now because I am not aware of what you are talking about,” said the OCPD, before hanging up the telephone.
East African Standard