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Kenya: preventing electoral violence

Global Communities hosted a discussion Thursday morning with their own Kimberly Tilock, Jackie Wilson of the U.S. Institute of Peace and Lauren Ploch Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service.  Tara Candland, a master’s student at SAIS, reports:

Presidential elections will take place in Kenya Monday, March 4.  Many domestic and international observers worry about a recurrence of the violence that followed the 2007 elections.

Kenya was a one-party state until 2002, when an ethnically based opposition finally succeeded in pressuring the five-term president to step down.  The subsequent elections were peaceful, assuaging the international community’s fears of a violent transition and giving a false sense of electoral stability.  Despite warning signs in the lead-up to the 2007 elections, the violence took many by surprise.  Ethnic tensions had led to violence in the 1980s and 1990s, but international observers considered it marginal.

The electoral contest this year is primarily between the current Luo prime minister, Raila Odinga, and Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu.  The Luo and the Kikuyu are two of the largest ethnic groups in the country and frequently compete with each other.  Kenyatta would be the current president’s (also a Kikuyu) chosen successor.

The situation is complicated by the fact that both he and his running mate have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity associated with the 2007 electoral violence.  The current president has been liaising with Kenya’s business community to try to determine the potential impact on Kenya’s economy if the new president were to be an ICC indictee.

Despite progress since the 2007 elections, Blanchard cautions that there are still numerous problems as the election approaches and clear warnings of possible violence.  In 2010, a new constitution was adopted through a peaceful and credible referendum.  It overhauled the electoral system.  Nevertheless, vote buying has already begun, politicians are resorting to hate speech and ethnically based politicking, and grievances associated with land tenure and natural resources remain unresolved.  Furthermore, decentralization, a key aspect of the new system, has proven problematic, as both Blanchard and Tilock highlighted.  Many of the new districts are drawn along ethnic lines, reinforcing ethnic differences.

In the midst of these problems, Wilson explained, come reports of weapons stockpiling, increased presence of armed groups, rising police brutality and civilian aggression against the police.  The violence cannot usually be traced back to a particular candidate, but there are reports of politicians orchestrating the violence through late-night meetings and secret phone calls.  Tilock added that people have started to relocate to their tribal lands or have been evicted from their communities based on ethnicity.  Businesses are shutting down in anticipation of the election.  Observers are trying to determine what the trigger to violence might be, including long lines expected in most voting stations and intimidation.

According to Wilson, there are two main challenges to preventing electoral violence:

1. There is a lack of analysis on how it occurs and how to prevent it.
2. There is a critical gap between early warning and early response.

The Kenyan government has tried its best, making this one of the best elections in terms of available information, but there is still a need for action.  Local communities no longer trust the national system or the police and now want to form their own local response teams that would be based on text messaging networks and local dispute resolution committees.

One area that has commanded a lot of attention are the informal settlements, especially those in Nairobi where Global Communities works.  Tilock explained that they were a hotspot in the last election because the settlements are a microcosm of the country, with many different ethnic groups segregated into their own communities but living side-by-side.  There is high unemployment and a large youth population from which the leaders of the 2007 violence drew many of their supporters.  Global Communities is working in the settlements to try educate people and help them recognize the way the national leaders are manipulating them.  The youth are destroying their communities for a couple of dollars a day to help leaders who have ignored the communities’ plight.

Global Communities has used different strategies to try to prevent violence in the informal settlements.  It has tried to establish meaningful dialogues between the different ethnic groups by training community mediators who are also responsible for monitoring the situation in the settlements and reporting on it.  It has also tried to depoliticize the situation by focusing on educating the residents as to their rights and the government’s responsibilities according to the 2010 constitution.

The focus has been mainly on settlement leaders and youth.  Global Communities believes that leaders will be leaders no matter the circumstances.  Therefore the best leaders for a peace campaign are the people who are currently leading the settlements:  the gang leaders.  This has proven remarkably successful.