Thousands of Kenyans Displaced as Election Outrage Unearths Festering Ethnic Tensions

Refugee Rights News
Volume 4, Issue 1
January 2008

Commonly acknowledged as a pinnacle of African stability and democracy, Kenya has descended into social and political turmoil that has seen the igniting of ethnic tensions, mass displacement and the deaths of hundreds of civilians. Shortly after President Mwai Kibaki was announced winner of the December 27 national election, the nation erupted in violence amidst allegations of electoral misconduct. Opposition leader Raila Odinga refused to accept the results, which have been widely disputed by Kenyans and international observers. Despite various attempts at international mediation, hopes for an expedient resolution have been deferred as negotiations reached a stalemate.

Background

Speculation around electoral fraud first emerged during the tallying of votes. Raila Odinga, popular leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), whose party had made significant gains in earlier parliamentary elections, was enjoying a comfortable lead over President Kibaki until the eleventh hour of the tallying process when the count shifted markedly to put Kibaki on top. ODM and independent election observers contested the figures but the government failed to heed their protests. The Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) announced that Kibaki had won the election by a margin of 230,000 votes, and shortly thereafter he was sworn in as President in a hurried private ceremony at the State House. Following these events, ECK Chair Samuel Kivuitu revealed that he was unsure whether Kibaki had won the election and that he had felt pressured to announce the result quickly, despite the need to verify the tally.

Misgivings about the results have also been expressed by the European Union Electoral Mission and other observers. The EU mission asserted that irregularities were present in numerous constituencies. In the district of Molo for example, 25,000 votes were illegitimately attributed to Kibaki. Other anomalous activity included abnormal voter turnout in constituencies which strongly supported either Kibaki or Odinga, as well as lack of access for observers in some tallying stations, particularly in central Kenya where Kibaki is highly favoured.

Election misconduct sparks ethnic clashes

The contentious election brought to the fore longstanding inter-ethnic resentment among many Kenyans and has sparked a wave of violence that has mainly targeted members of Kibaki’s tribe, the politically and economically dominant Kikuyu. Violence, looting and attacks on civilians, mainly Kikuyus, have been particularly concentrated in Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret and Kisumu. Reports have asserted that at least 600 Kenyans have died in the violence.

Raila Odinga had built his campaign upon a promise to end Kikuyu privilege and ensure socio-economic empowerment of other ethnic groups. Millions of Kenyans thus felt betrayed by the controversial results which suggested perpetuation of the Kikuyu dominance that has characterized the Kenyan political landscape since independence. The response of the Kibaki government, hastily swearing in him in and banning live television and nationwide protest rallies, further fueled the notion that the regime was manipulating results to hold on to power and squeezing the space available for legitimate protest.

While violence seems now to be subsiding in Nairobi and other urban centres, it continues to rage in rural areas of the Rift Valley where ethnic tensions are more acute and where the conflict may prove to be far more protracted. There, clashes have been enacted with machetes, clubs and stones and Kikuyu shops have been looted and torched. Horrific brutality has ensued - at least 30 women and children were burned alive in a Rift Valley church where they sought refuge on New Years Day.

The current conflict is mainly between members of the Kalenjin and Kikuyu tribes and emulates a similar outbreak of violence between these groups in 1992, a previous election year. Conflicts here are rooted in political grievances, mainly over land. These date back to independence when President Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, redistributed most of the land acquired from Britons to Kikuyu from other areas, rather than to the impoverished Kalenjin and Masai that had inhabited the region for centuries. 

Amidst chaos, nearly 250,000 Kenyans displaced

Mass numbers of Kenyans have been forced to flee their homes in search of safe havens and protection for their families. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans have been displaced internally—as many as 250,000 according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Thousands more have fled to neighboring Uganda to escape the violence. Long a sanctuary for approximately 270,000 refugees from East, Central and the Horn of Africa, Kenyans are now themselves becoming the focus of massive relief efforts.

Although the recently displaced are receiving international attention, internal displacement in Kenya is not new. Always a politically sensitive issue, the situation of the displaced has been difficult to monitor, but UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in May 2006 that up to 431,153 Kenyans were displaced at that time. Some of those have been displaced due to flooding and other natural disasters, but others were displaced as a conflict around the transition to multiparty politics in the early 1990s and ongoing conflicts over local politics and resources.

In addition to the staggering numbers of IDPs, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported that approximately 5,400 Kenyans have crossed into Uganda to seek refuge in border towns among three eastern districts: Tororo, Busia and Manafwa. Make-shift reception centres have been established in primary schools and churches to shelter the refugees. Food and drug supplies that have reached refugees are reportedly, however, being quickly depleted.The delivery of food aid to the border towns has been difficult due to fuel scarcity in Uganda, itself an indirect consequence of the violence. Resource scarcity is compounded by the fact that new refugees are arriving daily and it is unclear when the inflow will stop.

Regional implications

While the political crisis in Kenya has given rise to yet another internal humanitarian crisis, it has also hindered other relief operations in the region as food and other aid supplies have been unable to reach beneficiaries in Uganda, southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With Kenya boasting sea ports that serve much of East Africa and the Great Lakes region, considerable economic damage has resulted from the difficulty in moving goods and fuel.

The way forward?

The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) has appealed to the national authorities to agree to engage in political dialogue with Odinga’s ODM under international mediation. It has also called on the leader of the opposition to entreat his supporters to remain calm during the protests and to publicly announce that all individuals responsible for human rights violations will be prosecuted.

KHRC has also urged the international community, and more specifically the African Union, to propose a mediation mechanism for reaching a political solution and to explore the possibility of establishing an international independent commission to investigate on the electoral process and subsequent events.

So far international efforts have failed, however, to produce results. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, for example, has agreed to go to Nairobi to act as mediator between Kibaki and Odinga in negotiating power-sharing terms. Yet, Kibaki’s government has rejected the international mediation. Minister John Michuki told reporters, “If Kofi Annan is coming, he is not coming at our invitation.” Other luminaries such as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Ghanaian President John Kufuor and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu have also been reported to be planning a mediation role. Kibaki’s government maintains that they have won the elections, and therefore there is no warrant for international mediation.

This reluctance to negotiate has diminished hopes for a prompt end to the current stalemate. Conflict thus continues as Kenyans hope for the reforms that will address the grievances over access to social, economic and political rights that have been at the root of the violence—legitimate grievances that have regrettably manifested in reprehensible brutality on all sides.