350,000 Internally Displaced People reported in Kenya (updated October 2003)

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1 350,000 Internally Displaced People reported in Kenya (updated October 2003) The Global IDP Database of the Norwegian Refugee Council has now updated its country profile on internal displacement in Kenya. A summary is presented below. The Database and the complete country profile can be accessed at During the 1990s more than half a million Kenyans were internally displaced because of violence along inter-ethnic lines largely instigated by the ruling KANU (Kenya African National Union) in response to the introduction of multi-party democracy. By repeatedly attacking tribal groups connected to opposition parties, KANU, which had been in office since independence in 1963, managed to cling to power until being finally voted out in relatively peaceful elections in December The new government, which is a coalition of former opposition parties, has embarked on an ambitious programme to eliminate corruption and enhance peace and reconciliation efforts. Despite the change in the political climate, few of the reported 350,000 internally displaced people (IDP) returned to their original homes during The majority are waiting to see if the pledges of the new government hold true, and how the security situation in their places of origin evolves. The Parliament ratified on 30 July 2003 with a slim margin a commitment to resettle all the displaced people. Meanwhile, most of these internally displaced people (IDPs) are living in squalor in Kenya s urban slums, surviving on petty trade, casual labor and commercial sex work. Elections in December 2002 Election observers concluded that the presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2002 broadly reflected the popular will and was free and fair. For the first time since independence in 1963, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) lost the presidency and the majority of seats in Parliament. Daniel Arap Moi who along with Kenyatta were the only two presidents in power since independence, was finally forced to hand over power to Mwai Kibaki, leader of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), a group of opposition political parties and former KANU leaders. The transfer of power is generally expected to have created political conditions conducive to large-scale resettlement programmes and return movements (US DOS, 24 June 2003). Causes of displacements Although cattle rustling, urban disturbances and official eviction all caused some displacement, it is widely recognized that it was the introduction of multi--party politics in the 1990s that was the main trigger for the major displacements throughout the decade. These displacements were often violent, with more than 4,000 people being killed as they took place. The major periods of violence and displacement centered around the 1992 and 1997 elections. The main perpetrators of the violence in both these elections were predominantly Kelenjin supporters of the KANU government against members of opposition groups. However, the Kikuyus who were the main victims of the violence related to the elections in 1992 had by the 1997 elections managed to organize and fight back (Article 19, December 1998, sect 1). By 1993 in the Rift Valley the previous two years of violence had forced about 300,000 people to flee their homes most belonging to tribal groups associated with the political opposition in the 1992 election (HRW, June 1997, p. 36). Reports suggest that perhaps half of these internally displaced people had

2 resettled by the mid-1990s, but additional displacement also occurred during the period (USCR, 1998). There was a major outbreak of violence in the Mombassa region/ Coast province in August and early September 1997 in addition to the upheaval in the Rift Valley. The violence in the Mombassa region and the Coast province caused up to 120,000 people to flee and left at least 100 dead (US DOS 30 January, sect 1a; Nowrojee 1998, p. 65; USCR 1998). In addition to the displacements of the 1990s, recent conflicts, magnified by small arms proliferation, have caused sporadic population displacement amongst seminomadic communities in the Northern Frontier Districts and Coast province (UN DPMCU Dec 2002, p. 35). Protection concerns The scant information on the IDP situation in Kenya makes it difficult to account comprehensively for their situation and their conditions. Nevertheless, the elections in December 2002 removed one major obstacle for large-scale resettlement and return movements. The new government is unlikely to support and instigate political violence in the same manner as the former government. So that one of the main protection issue throughout the 1990s, informal repression - when security and government forces directly or indirectly support armed gangs and bandits for political and/or economical purposes - should now be less of a concern. The post-elections protection concerns are to a greater extent related to pauperization and lingering insecurity. Displaced Kenyans are increasingly exposed to violent crime, sexual abuse, robberies, and proliferation of small arms. A study of the situation faced by women who remained internally displaced in 2001 revealed very weak coping mechanisms and close linkages between displacement, social disintegration and sexual violence (UNIFEM January 2002). National response to return and resettlement Despite the transfer of power in December 2002, only sporadic return movements have taken place throughout A majority of the reported 350,000 internally displaced persons seem to prefer to wait and see how the security situation in their places of origin evolves and/or to be resettled in other parts of the country by the new government. In fact, over 80 per cent of the IDPs cited insecurity as a main reason for not returning according to a comprehensive UN report on IDPs in Kenya (UN DPMCU, Dec 2002, p 37) The government has undertaken to resettle all the displaced people and pledged to ensure their security as soon as it is practically possible (UN OCHA, 11 August, 2003). The motion authorizing the resettlement was passed in the Parliament in July 2003 with a margin of one single vote, which might reflect some political hesitancy to resolve the situation for the Internally Displaced People. Opponents to the motion argued that resettlement of victims to their original land would reopen wounds and lead to new mayhem among the implicated communities (UN OCHA, 11 August 2003). The new government has also established a Task Force to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Task force chairman Makau Mutua stated at an international conference in Nairobi in August 2003 that the message from Kenyans all over the country was that they wanted an effective truth commission, but were not so sure about blanket amnesties for the perpetrators (African Online, 18 August 2003). Another sign of the new government s commitment to address the plight of the IDPs has been the establishment of the Department of Reconstruction within the Office of the vice-president with the mandate to implement the recommendations in the so-called Akiwumi report, which was commissioned by the KANU Government to determine the origin and the underlying causes of the violence from 1991 to The report that was released in October 2002, two and a half years after it was finalized and only further to sustained pressure from the opposition groups, found several high officials in the former government liable in violence that caused displacements in the 1990s. The findings were so disturbing for the KANU government that the Attorney General in a press release of 18 October 2002 denied many of the allegations in the report (Attorney General, 18 October 2002). Issues that will have to be addressed by the new government to enhance return movements include illegal grazing, looting, cattle rustling, banditry, invalid land title documents, land nationalized by the KANU government, farmers who were forced to sell their land below market price, and prevailing animosity and 2

3 persistent lack of confidence among the implicated communities (UN Resident Coordinator 7 July 2003; USCR, 2000; Article 19, October 1997HRW, June 1997, pp 71-72). Living conditions The majority of IDPs in Kenya continue to live in urban areas in dire conditions such as streets and informal settlements. Displaced who live in camp-like conditions in schools or church compounds and abandoned buildings lack access to clean water, food and sanitation. Over 70 per cent of the heads of household interviewed in the cited UN commissioned report of December 2002 were single mothers with up to eight children fathered by different men. These women, in addition to the tremendous burden of putting food on the table for so many children, are often exposed to physical and sexual violence. Coping mechanisms among IDPs include petty trade, casual labor, charcoal burning and commercial sex work. The new Government has made schooling free of charge and thereby removed a major obstacle for displaced and destitute children to attend classes. Many schools are congested as a result of the new government s education policy, though statistics on displaced children attending classes are unavailable (UN OCHA, 31 March 2003; UN DPMCU, Dec 2002, pp 36, 39). National and international humanitarian response Internal displacement in Kenya has only received limited international attention. A major UNDP resettlement programme was in place between 1993 and 1995 and a substantive number of people benefited from it. However, the programme was phased out as a reaction to the forceful expulsion of 2000 internally displaced people from the Maela camp in 1994 by the KANU government. The programme was also strongly criticized by Human Rights Watch because it had allegedly systematically failed to address the unresolved aspects of the conflict such as land entitlements and impunity for perpetrators (HRW, June 1997). The report commissioned by the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya in 2002 was the first serious international comprehensive attempt to draw attention to the situation for the IDPs since the UNDP programme ended in Agencies that assisted displaced and destitute people during the clashes in the 1990s include the Kenya Red Cross, World Vision, AMREF, Jesuit Refugee Services, Action Aid and The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK). However, as of December 2002, only the Kenya Red Cross would respond to arising emergency situations (UN DPMCU, Dec 2002, p. 42). Historical background and the new government Various sources trace the overtly political displacements of the 1990s to land tenure issues and forced displacements of Kenya s colonial past. In the beginning of the 19 th century, the British colonialists evicted indigenous nomadic pastoralists (Kalenjin, Maasai, Samburu and Turkana) from the most fertile land in the Rift valley in the west and recruited non-indigenous agricultural labor from the neighboring provinces to work on their farms, particularly Kikuyus from the Central Province. During the 1960s, in the aftermath of the colonialists departure from what is commonly labeled the White Farmlands, the non-indigenous agricultural labor on the European farms took advantage of the land-buying schemes offered by President Kenyatta and bought the land they had worked on for the white colonialists (CIDCM, Oct 1999, pp.1-4; HRW June 1997, pp ). The nomadic pastoralists who had been evicted by the colonialists were thereby denied what they perceived as their right to recover their own land. This situation was largely maintained throughout the KANU period until when the non-indigenous agriculturalists were ordered to leave the Rift valley and return to their home land in the Central Provinces. This order and the consequent violent displacements coincided almost precisely with the amendment of the Kenyan Constitution to permit multi-party politics in September 1991(Article 19, Oct 1997, p. 24). The current displacements and unresolved land tenure issues perpetuate a situation whereby different tribal groups compete for scarce resources and to a large extent for the same land. It remains to be seen if the new government s resettlement policy will address the underlying historical and economical causes of the violence and the displacements in an adequate manner (Updated October 2003). 3

4 Kenya researcher: Arild Birkenes Tel: +41 (0) Sources: Africa Online, 18 August 2003, Delegates discuss scope of proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Article 19, October 1997, Deadly Marionettes: State-Sponsored Violence In Africa [Internet] Article 19, December 1998, Kenya: Post-election political violence [Internet] Attorney-General, 18 October 2002, Press Statement: Akiwumi Report [Internal link] Human Rights Watch (HRW), June 1997, Failing The Internally Displaced: The UNDP Displaced Persons Program In Nowrojee B., 1998, Kenya", in Janie Hampton, ed., Internally Displaced People: A Global Survey, (London, Earthscan Publ) U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), 2000, World Refugee Survey 2000: Country Report U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), 1998, World Refugee Survey 1998: Country Report U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), 1998, World Refugee Survey 1998: Country Report U.S. Department of State (U.S. DOS), 30 January 1998, Kenya Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997 [Internet] U.S. Department of State (U.S. DOS), 24 June 2003, Africa: Supporting Human Rights and Democracy - The U.S. Record [Internet] UN Disaster Prevention, Management and Co-ordination Unit (DPMCU), 7 July 2003, Kenya Humanitarian Update Jun 2003 [Internet] UN Disaster Prevention, Management and Co-ordination Unit (DPMCU), 11 August 2003, Kenya Humanitarian Update Jul 2003 [Internet] UN Disaster Prevention, Management and Co-ordination Unit (DPMCU), 31 December 2002, Kenya's Internally Displaced Persons [Internal link] UNIFEM-African Women in Crisis Programme (UNIFEM/AFWIC), 2002, The Lives and Life- Choices of Dispossessed Women in Kenya (prepared by Prisca Mbura Kamungi) [Internal link] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 31 March 2003, Affected populations in the Greater Horn of Africa Region 31 Mar 2003 [Internet] Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), October 1999, 4

5 "Kikuyu, Kisii, Luhya, and Luo in Kenya" by Shin-wha Lee and Anne Pitsch (Update by Alexander Danso) [Internet] 5