Kenya Kenya’s efforts to tackle a wide array of security threats have been marred by on- going patterns of serious human rights violations by Kenyan security forces, in- cluding extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and torture. Despite evidence of these abuses, the government rarely investigates or prosecutes abusive secu- rity officers. The government has been slow in implementing key reforms that were identified in 2008 as crucial to addressing Kenya’s political crisis , including land and ac- countability, and security sector reforms. There has been
Kenya Kenya’s human rights environment faced serious challenges in 2015 as the secu- rity crisis escalated. Persistent deadly attacks by Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based Islamist armed group, culminated in the April 2 massacre of 148 people, includ- ing 142 students, at Garissa University in the northeast. The government re- sponded to Al-Shabaab attacks with efforts to expand police and security agency powers, and curtail basic rights through new legislation. Government policies have targeted human rights organizations for closure, tried to stifle media, and
321 FIFTEEN Examining and contextualising Kenya’s Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation (MYWO) through an African feminist lens Anne Namatsi Lutomia, Brenda Nyandiko Sanya and Dorothy Owino Rombo Introduction In this chapter Maendeleo ya Wanawake, Kenya’s oldest registered women’s organisation (Wipper, 1975; Akin-Aina, 2011), serves as a point of entry for discussing feminisms in Kenya. The name of the organisation, Maendeleo ya Wanawake, directly translates into English as ‘women’s progress’. Despite the lack of systemic documentation of the organisation
China has expanded economic ties across Africa, and its infrastructural influence in Kenya is now unrivalled. Articulated primarily through road and rail networks, bilateral relations with Kenya are allowing for the realization of state agendas – Kenya’s Vision 2030 as well as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Certainly, Kenya–China relations have a long history. China was one of the first countries to open an embassy in Kenya after it gained independence in 1963 ( Alden and Alves, 2008 ; Farooq et al, 2018 ; Kimari, 2021 ), yet these ties have
25 TWO The dynamics of regulating low-fee private schools in Kenya Gilbert Mitullah Omware Introduction The role of the government in the discourse on education has been transformed in many African countries with the increased participation of the private sector in education, whether through government initiatives or the efforts of the private sector.1 This change, signalled by the gravitation towards neoliberal marketisation, marks the conversion of education from a contested space of knowledge to a more commodity-oriented space, where rules of the
This chapter explores how tokenism often features in community development work with and for young people. We explore how Nzumari Africa focus on youth leadership to create systemic shifts in Kenya. They mobilise young people to challenge the status quo and address the barriers to their wider participation. We focus on Yvonne Ochieng’s personal journey from high school graduate to programme manager, to position the very real barriers to youth participation that she and her peers have experienced and how they have pushed forward their agenda to be heard as a
153 EIGHT Disability and barriers in Kenya Lisbet Grut, Joyce Olenja and Benedicte Ingstad People with impairments encounter many barriers in their daily life. In this chapter we describe the variety of barriers and see how the collected sum of many barriers influence access to what is considered essential and indispensable for all humans: healthcare services and education. We illuminate some of the mechanisms that create and maintain a difficult life in a resource-poor context by describing the particular challenges people living in poverty with
attributed. The derivative works do not need to be licensed on the same terms. Enhancing evidence-informed decision making: strategies for engagement between public health faculty and policymakers in Kenya Nasreen Jessani, njessani@jhu.edu Caitlin Kennedy, caitlinkennedy@jhu.edu Sara Bennett, sbennett@jhu.edu Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA This article examines the complex interactions and strategies for engagement – both existing as well as desired – between academic Knowledge Brokers (KBs) and national health policymakers in Kenya. Based
When the Digital Taxi Association of Kenya (DTAK) first approached the Transport Workers Union (TWU) for affiliation, they were looking for an established union that could legitimise strike action and serve as a counterpart in collective bargaining with platform companies. Admittedly, TWU was not their first choice, but it was their only choice. The weak regulatory framework and legal ambiguity surrounding e-hailing workers’ identities, meant that unions were reluctant to organise DTAK members into their ranks. How would seemingly self-employed workers fit
119 6 Insider-outsider reflections on terrorism research in the coastal region of Kenya Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen Introduction Navigating one’s positionality while researching on terrorism can be particularly challenging when working in regions vulnerable to religiously motivated ideologies on violent extremism, where suspicion and access present barriers to engaging with the participants (Dolnik, 2013; Nielsen, 2014). Even if the researcher shares the same religion as that of the participants and is acquainted with the culture wherein relational aspects
