AN UPRIGHT MANHOOD AND AN ENLIGHTENED WOMANHOOD NEEDED TO FIGHT AND WIN THE STRUGGLE FOR GENDER EQUALITY

INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS – KENYA SECTION

JUDICIAL DISCOURSE ON HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION: 

THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS

JUDICIAL TRAINING INSTITUTE, NAIROBI, KENYA

18 – 20 FEBRUARY 2015

OPENING REMARKS BY NJONJO MUE, VICE CHAIR, ICJ – KENYA

Hon. Chief Justice, Hon. Justice Ngugi, Director of the Judiciary Training Institute; our partners and co-convenors of this workshop, Equality Now and Katiba Institute; Hon. Judges and Magistrates; ladies and gentlemen.

It gives me great pleasure, on behalf of ICJ – Kenya, to welcome you to this discourse.

ICJ Kenya is a membership organization established in 1959 whose mission is to promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Africa through the application of legal expertise and international best practices. ICJ has had a long history of supporting judicial reforms and considers the judiciary a key ally in realizing human rights, democracy and the rule of law. ICJ Kenya, as a partner to the Judiciary, offers technical expertise and is always independent and impartial in its work.

Sometimes the work of organizations such as the ICJ is not well understood, and its views may not always be accepted especially where they are critical. However, it is important to state that the work is carried out with the objective of improving the judiciary and ensuring access to justice for the public.

ICJ Kenya recognizes the unique role that judicial officers play not only as duty bearers; leaders; interpreters of treaties and legislation; but also as champions of human rights and the rule of law.

This partnership with JTI, Equality Now and Katiba Institute seeks to contribute towards the effective implementation of the Maputo Protocol through engagement with East African Judiciaries. As the EAC countries move towards integration, peer will learning such as these will be important especially given the situation in partner states e.g. Tanzania which is developing a new constitution, or South Sudan which still has a fairly young judiciary.

The Maputo protocol which entered into force in 2005 is a statement of the commitment of African states to the protection of the rights of African women. In fact it is a demonstration that indeed Africa can come up with genuine African solutions to African problems. However, African women still face challenges in the realization of their rights. These include gross violations such as harmful traditional practices such as FGM, domestic violence, disinheritance and lack of access to land, and other forms of discrimination.

It is worth noting that whereas courts through their judgments are important, they are only one part of the solution. As the 2/3 case in Kenya has demonstrated, court orders can be disobeyed or not implemented in good faith. Therefore, it is important for courts to strike a balance between judicial activism and judicial restraint with regard to issues of public interest.  When necessary, judicial officers should also use their power to convene parties to resolve issues and guard against locking society with decisions which have the potential of leaving the public without any further means of recourse.

Courts should also use judicial power in such cases to require parties such as government institutions to report on progress made in the implementation of their orders, to ensure that the rule of law is respected.

It is our hope that initiatives such as these can be encouraged across the continent, and that ultimately we shall increase the understanding of women’s rights and the Protocol across Africa.

As someone who has been involved in the struggle for constitutional reform in Kenya, I know that change does not come easily. The women’s movement also needs to realise that these issues will not be resolved without a struggle and the involvement of all women who must be at the forefront of the fight for their rights. Women must therefore continue to organize, mobilize and advocate strongly if there is to be lasting change.

But it is also critical that women do not leave the men behind in this struggle for equality. Men must be made to understand that by compressing the feet of their daughters, they are thereby also retarding the steps of their sons. It will take an upright manhood and an enlightened womanhood working together to fight and win the critical battles that lie ahead. For we cannot enter our Land of Promise half-fettered and half-free.

I thank you. 

JUBILEE MANIFESTO 2017

Yesterday marked the official start of Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election campaign. The ‪#‎SecurityBill‬ had little to do with containing terrorists but everything to do with terrorising citizens into submitting to every whim of the state, to stop us from exposing the rot, to never dare point out that the Emperor's new clothes are a bit too revealing, and thereby to eventually guarantee that the prophesied 20 year rule of Jubilee becomes a reality.

Now they shall detain us without trial, they shall declare us guilty until we are proved innocent, they shall listen to our phone calls, they shall require us to ask for their permission to investigate them, we shall also have to check with them whether some pictures are 'gory' or 'offensive' before we can share them, they shall deregister us claiming we are funding terrorists without providing a shred of evidence or giving us a chance to be heard, and, oh yes, in everything we do, we must be very careful not 'to undermine the authority of a public officer'. We've been here before and some of us are old enough to remember how Moi did it and Kenyatta before him.

The big question of the day is, are we supposed to just roll over and accept to give up all the gains we have fought, sweated, bled and died for over the last two decades?

The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Amkeni ndugu zetu.

A Kenyan Tragedy

Just seen a disturbing documentary straight after prime time news on KTN made by Mike Sonko showing him dishing out wads of money Moi-style to victims of the Loreto bus accident. He visited each of their homes to give them cash, went to weep at the gravesides of those who died, took all the families on an excursion to Lake Nakuru National Park and on helicopter rides, and then for dinner at The Carnivore.

The families seemed truly pleased and heaped praises on their beloved Senator and the President who apparently had also sent Sonko with Ksh. 600,000 to distribute to the families. The documentary, whose executive producer was Sonko himself, reminded me of the KBC weekly program 'Yaliyotokea' which used to showcase a summary of the public events that Moi had attended  during a particular week.

While one cannot blame the victims' families for accepting the freebies, it is disturbing that no one asks where all this money is coming from. Even more disturbing is the fact that instead of finding a long term policy solution to the carnage on our roads, our leaders wait for people to be killed and maimed and then go and cry crocodile tears while making documentaries of themselves to campaign for the next election. A uniquely Kenyan tragedy.

The arc of the moral universe it long, but it bends toward justice.

The rich and the powerful of this world may use their money and power to subvert the institutions of this world and to trample the rights of the poor and the powerless and deny them justice. They may use their money to get the best legal representation money can buy. They may kill, disappear, intimidate or bribe witnesses. They may use their positions of power to mobilize hoards of supporters and rally fellow rich and powerful people to their cause. And for a time, they may appear to have prevailed, but only for a while. For the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

Ole Nkaisserry for Ole Lenku: Same cake, different icing...

Substituting one Joseph for another (Nkaissery for Lenku) in the Security Docket does nothing to improve our security if the underlying issues of an unreformed, corrupt and inept security sector are not honestly and seriously addressed. This is just Uhuru Kenyatta finding an alibi in advance to explain the abysmal failure of his government to protect the Kenyan people when the time comes to campaign for re-election in 2017.

He is in effect telling ODM: "You've been complaining about insecurity, I am now appointing one of your own, a (nominal) ODM politician to be (nominally) in charge."

But once the false trappings of power lose their allure for Nkaisserry as they did for Lenku, he will realise that he has been handed a poison chalice; when it becomes clear that it's a no win situation for him, he will either resign or be fired. By this time it will be close enough to the elections, and Jubilee can take advantage of Kenyans' short memories and claim that it was actually ODM that was in charge of security at the time when insecurity decimated Kenya.

The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Amkeni ndugu zetu.

What's in a Name?

Today our daughter Nashipai celebrates her one week birthday. As we mark this milestone, one thing we are quickly finding out is that if you are to swim against the current, be prepared to answer questions at every turn. In our case, her name Nashipai Katindi Njonjo has been the subject of many conversations and curious whispers. The most interesting being, since traditionally our middle name is usually regarded as our 'real' name (the first being the 'given name' and the last being the surname), then, 'Why is she being named after Katindi instead of after my mother according to the Kikuyu custom?' And we have to explain that her name is not Katindi, it is Nashipai. Katindi Njonjo is her composite surname, although not hyphenated. Then instead of using the Kikuyu naming pattern strictly under which she would have been called Nyambura after my mother, we chose a name that reflects a character quality that most reminds us of my mother, hence Nashipai. Which is also controversial to some, since it is neither a Kikuyu nor a Kamba name (it is not even a Kiswahili name like Baraka or Neema - which many regard as fairly neutral and safe in our ethnically sensitive culture), but a Samburu one. Nchipai means happiness and also praise. Nashipai is the female name of the one who brings happiness and also an expression of praise in a divine context. My late mother, even with her modest education, was never shy of breaking new ground. She was a trade unionist in the factory where she worked even before I could walk. I am sure she would have been proud of both her latest grandchild and the names that she bears.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: KENYA’S HISTORIC AND COSTLY NON-EVENT

Kenyans learned a very expensive lesson this week: that the President is like the Titanic, very difficult to turn around. Or, to put it more accurately, that eating presidential humble pie can be a costly national exercise.

For whatever spin politicians try to put on this week’s bizarre events, they amount to little more than so much pomp and circumstance to justify Uhuru Kenyatta’s having to eat humble pie and appear before a court he dismissed barely a year ago as “a pantomime, a toy of declining imperial powers”.  

Kenyatta had invested over a year of his presidency badmouthing the ICC and sending his ministers crisscrossing the globe in search of allies to back his impunity bandwagon. He had staked his diplomatic reputation to mobilize fellow African leaders to answer his call to arms against the ICC and they had dutifully played along, going so far as to swear that no African head of state would ever appear before the ICC and to amend their own laws to provide that they could never be prosecuted before a regional court yet to be created.  And yet on the date that he should have been toasting to Uganda’s independence anniversary with his comrade-in-arms, Yoweri Museveni, Mr. Kenyatta sat subdued in court, expressionless and mute, as if dutifully playing the lead role in a pantomime.

But to justify why he was now going to travel to The Hague and appear before the ‘toy of declining imperial powers,’ President Kenyatta had to first make a big show of temporarily handing over power to his Deputy, “so that Kenya’s sovereignty is not subjected to a foreign jurisdiction.” And so various organs of state had to be convened in emergency sessions including the Cabinet, the National Security Council and Parliament to be informed that the President of the Republic was donating his ‘P’ to William Ruto and becoming a mere Resident of the Republic, or an unPresident if you like, so that he could travel to the ICC in his individual capacity.

And we all played along. We pretended not to remember that Mr. Kenyatta was charged before the ICC as an individual because the ICC only prosecutes individuals, not presidents or prime ministers. We pretended that had he traveled to The Hague without all the fanfare of signing legal instruments handing over power to his deputy, power would still have been automatically transferred to Ruto as it always is every time the President travels abroad. We pretended that our sovereignty was now safe and secure at home in the hands of Ruto and forgot that our sovereignty was never vested in Uhuru Kenyatta in the first place; it always vests in the people of Kenya.

In other words, just as Uhuru Kenyatta was signing an instrument to temporarily hand over power, we collectively also seemed to temporarily take leave of our senses. At least the MPs did, and the Cabinet, and the National Security Council, and the media who faithfully reported this farce, this melodrama from the theatre of the absurd, as if it was really news and analysis.

But as Uhuru Kenyatta took back his ‘P’ from Ruto, it is my hope that we too resumed our senses. For only then would we realize just what an expensive melodrama this was when we calculate just how much this latest chapter of the ‘personal challenge’ actually cost the taxpayer. From the recalling of Parliamentarians from recess to witness a constitutional non-event, to flying the whole House to make a spectacle of themselves in The Hague, to flying unPresident Uhuru and unFirst Lady Margaret out and flying back President Kenyatta and First Lady Margaret, to blocking Nairobi traffic for seven hours, to paying off hysterical praise singers.

More importantly, it is my hope that as we resume our senses, we will also remember to whisper a prayer for the souls of the 1,133 Kenyans who could not be present to witness this costly non-event because the events of 2008 permanently removed them from our midst without giving them the option of coming back from the grave and resuming their personhood at a time of their choosing.