If we are to effectively tackle terrorism, there needs to be some truth-telling, historical perspective and a genuine desire to get to the heart of the beast. We must acknowledge that terrorist organisations are often a product of real or perceived injustices and are borne out of a sense of desperation. And they are often supplied with arms by the very forces that claim to be fighting them.

The United Nations is notorious for not protecting whistleblowers, despite a 2005 whistleblower protection policy, and rarely, if ever, takes disciplinary action against corrupt individuals.

Local media coverage of the 2013 Kenyan elections downplayed acts of violence and bordered on self-censorship despite the fact that social media reflected a deeply politically and ethnically divided society. The new Kenyatta government has now embarked on a charm offensive to co-opt the media

Successive Somali governments have not accounted for nearly $238 million, the bulk of which constituted bilateral assistance, according to an audit report made available exclusively to the East African.

To novelist Nuruddin Farah, his homeland city is not the ‘most dangerous in the world;’ it’s the prettiest and most colourful — once you’ve tasted its waters, you will always go back.

Even if the London Conference on Somalia hosted by the UK government last month may not have been yet another business opportunity for Western governments and companies, the timing is certainly suspect.

Somalia’s transitional administration is mired in corruption. Like other players in the lawless nation, the government has contributed to the suffering of its own people.

For more than a century, Kenya’s coastal people have been repeatedly alienated from their land and marginalised from public services, particularly education. Now they want to break away from the rest of the country.

A huge international conference is being organised in London on Somalia, but it does not have the support of the citizens. It will fail because what the ‘international community’ has failed to learn over the years is that Somalis are fiercely independent people.

What should concern Kenya is not the political and personal fate of the suspects whose charges have been confirmed by the International criminal Court, but the lives of the thousands of victims who are still nursing their wounds four years later.